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Cover Story

Street Smarts

The Glenny Drive Apartments on Buffalo’s East Side are an object lesson in poor urban planning, to be sure, but they probably do not constitute a constructive learning environment.

Street Smarts

Home Improvement

by Daniel B. Honigman

Salvaging a Dream

by Peter Koch

Miracle on Lombard St.

by Peter Koch

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): One day 17 years ago I was lying alone on my acupuncturist’s table, floating in that hypnogogic state you sometimes slip into when your ears, wrists, feet, and forehead are pierced with needles. At one point she came in to check on me. Patting me on the upper arm, she murmured, “You will live a long life.” I received it as a prophecy, as a gift from her intuition to mine. In the days and months that followed, it stripped away the habitual anxiety I carried around with me and freed me to live with more courage and abandon. It gave me license to believe more wildly in my own potential. Now I’m offering you the same gift, Pisces. If you’re reading this horoscope today, you will live a long life.

Letters to Artvoice

“Brave Hart” (Artvoice v5n10)is another example of a coward who blames others for his fears. As in the Vietnam War, these people will find lots of reasons for not doing their duty (like Bill Clinton did).

Streetvoice

Revisiting the Abortion Wars

by Miakka Natisse Wood

With the appointment of two new conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, many state legislatures are anxious to challenge the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade. South Dakota leads the way with a new law that vastly limits access to abortions. As activists on both sides of the debate prepare for the showdown, Buffalo native Eyal Press’ new book, Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America, presents a unique narrative of the events that made our city a hotbed of the abortion debate in the 1990s. The son of the only Buffalo obstetrician still performing abortions today, Press examines the contentious years preceding the October 23, 1998 murder of physician Dr. Barnett Slepian. Combining memoir and social history, Press’ book is bound to remind Buffalonians of a painful moment in the national spotlight and draw them back to an argument that seems immune to resolution.

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

■ The Perfectly Equal Society: (1) In January, Canada’s human rights commission was authorized by the Supreme Court to resume consideration of a union’s claim that Air Canada’s flight attendants (who are mostly women) are just as valuable, and therefore should be paid the same, as its pilots and mechanics (mostly men). (2) Also in January, Doug Anglin, 17, filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against Milton (Mass.) High School, which he said discriminates against boys by giving better grades to students who “sit down, follow orders, and listen to what (teachers and administrators) say.” “Men,” Anglin told a Boston Globe reporter, “naturally rebel against this.”

The News, Briefly

Gambling with Waterfront Development

by Geoff Kelly

Last week the Erie Canal Harborfront Development Corporation unveiled a $1.4 billion plan to revitalize Buffalo’s long-neglected waterfront. This plan seems more real than previous attempts at waterfront redevelopment—there is money in place, political support and reasonable, phased objectives. But what place does the proposed Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino have in these plans? Artvoice spoke with James A. Metzger of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership’s Waterfront Advisory Panel for his take. Metzger, who lives in Kenmore, is also a member of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County, which will hold a fund-raiser at Hallwalls in the Church on Friday, March 24 at 7 pm. For more details, visit www.NoCasinoErie.org.

Getting a Grip

Chuck E. Cheese: On the Front Lines in Iraq

by Michael I. Niman

Last week I wrote about the “intellectual lynching of Jay Bennish.” Bennish is the Colorado high school teacher who dared teach geopolitics in a geopolitics class, bringing his students up to date on some of the unseemly aspects of U.S. propaganda, history and foreign policy. Though there seem to have been no factual transgressions in Bennish’s lesson, he was vilified across the corporate media landscape by an army of bimbo news anchors and angry white radio guys. The message was clear: We shouldn’t teach children about Iraq by bringing facts into a high school classroom.

Fine Dining

New Take on American: 800 Maple

by Arthur Page

For many years I was fortunate to live not far from a Four Seasons Restaurant.

The Dance of La Mancha

by Angela Hastings

Choreographer Marius Petipa and his collaborator, composer Ludwig Minkus, were inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote; both were intrigued by the underlying question of whether it was better to marry for love or money. The first production of the full-length ballet born of their collaboration premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on December 26, 1869 and was a triumph; audiences loved it from the beginning. After its premiere, Petipa continued to make many changes in the choreography and even had Minkus extend the musical score.

Theaterweek

Ring of Fire

The Cocktail Hour

Poetry

surrealist expulsion from the garden of poetics/ode to Breton's Free Union

by Robert Pomerhn

untitled

by Robert Whiteside

Book Reviews

Frank, by R.M. Berry

by Peter Conners

The promotional blurb on the back of R.M. Berry’s new book, Frank, describes it as the author’s “‘unwriting’ of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” with Shelley’s protagonist Victor Frankenstein replaced by Frank Stein, “distant cousin of Gertrude.” This Gertrude is, of course, the Grand Dame of experimental writing, Gertrude Stein, and before we even open the book we are launched into the post modern universe of R. M. Berry, one of America’s leading contemporary experimental writers. Not only does Berry usurp Shelley’s epistolary narrative to comic effect, but he mimics her high-literary tone with perfect pitch: “So strange an event has befallen me that I can’t forbear relating it, although in my present disordered state my words may want sense.” The fact that he projects these tones through the voices of two protagonists, both modern-day writers, lambastes the whole enterprise of creative writing, thus poking the ribs of those most likely to fully appreciate this book. In fact, it seems that Berry has the chops, the intelligence, and the welcome audacity to mimic and lambaste any target he turns his gaze upon. His willingness to push his readers’ hot-buttons on everything from race to sexual orientation to literary fixation put me in mind of Terry Southern minus the twin crutches of sex and drugs. This is unorthodoxy you can sink your brain into.

Gewgaws and Gimcracks

DV326 Videophone

by David P. Kleinschmidt

VoIP is a big deal in the technology sector these days, but it’s actually a pretty simple concept. VoIP stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol,” and it is the technology used to send phone calls over the Internet rather than the standard telephone network. The major benefit of using VoIP is that it’s cheaper to use the Internet, where a connection halfway around the world doesn’t cost any more than a connection halfway across town, rather than using the standard telephone network, where every phone company between your phone and the other phone shows up somewhere on your bill. Another benefit is that VoIP can take advantage of the flexibility of the Internet to bring more functionality to your phone—namely videophone service, the holy grail of the Information Superhighway.

On DVD

Walerian Borowczyk Collection

by M. Faust

The death of filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk last month at the age of 82 went unnoticed by the American press, which is not surprising: his work is largely unknown in this country outside of cult aficionados who sought out imported and bootleg copies of his films on the basis of lurid descriptions that led them to expect something different from what they were getting.

Film Reviews

Freed Enterprise: Manderlay

by Girish Shambu

Scarlett Yes; Pimpernel No: V for Vendetta

by George Sax

Old Man Young: Neil Young Heart of Gold

by M. Faust

You Auto Know

It's Now Easier Being Green

by Jim Corbran

The Civic Hybrid (all Civics for that matter) is all new for 2006. More power, better handling—certainly better looking. And for all of Honda’s efforts, the Civic was recently named Car of the Year. You won’t hear any complaints about that from me. I recently managed to track one down at Don Davis Honda.

Puck Stop

The Swap Sheet

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

It’s an annual rite of passage in the NHL: the trade deadline, when general managers around the league engage in frenzied calling, faxing and bartering to bolster their teams’ fortunes for the playoffs. Those teams who have a legitimate claim to the Stanley Cup or are on the bubble for playoff seeding are the “buyers,” looking to acquire that one component to give them a better shot. Other teams are “sellers,” hopelessly out of the playoffs and looking to dump their marquee players or high-priced talent for future prospects.

See You There

Matthew Shipp

by Mark Norris

Pendulum

by Erin L. Haskell

Reverence: The Films of Owen Land

by M. Faust

Steve Wynn

by Eric Boucher

Music

Reverie of the Last Bandit: Nikki Sudden

by Donny Kutzbach

Being a post punk hero, one of England’s most underrated Songwriters and a hard artist to collect is all in a day’s work for Nikki Sudden. For a relatively obscure artist who has crafted a career well outside of mainstream circles, Nikki Sudden has always carried himself with a larger than life rock star panache. Like an oddly Victorian take on Marc Bolan or Keith Richards—two of Sudden’s unabashed idols—bursting with a dandy Wildean wit, as well as a certain underdog quality fitting a Dickens hero, Sudden’s thirty year career hasn’t counted any massive hits, gold albums or the other empty trappings of rock and roll lore.

Left of the Dial

The Robocop Kraus: They Think They Are the Robocop Kraus

by Joe Sweeney

Goldfrapp: Supernature

by Jennifer Behrens

The Sword: Age of Winters

by Matt Barber

Bandwidth

Stone Row

Celtic and world music with a contemporary edge, three hundred year old songs with blistering electric guitar, ethnic percussion, musicianship and entertainment, fun, Guinness, bad jokes, influences ranging from Celtic folk and Middle-Eastern Dance music to Queen and Van Halen.

Artist of the Week

David Moore

by Mark Norris

Why you should know who he is: For the past six years, David Moore has been a member of Buffalo’s most beloved Celtic rock group, Jackdaw. As the group’s accordionist and multi-instrumentalist (his other featured instruments include highland and uilleann pipes, tin whistles, vocals and many others), Moore provides the more traditional elements to the group’s boisterous mix of punk and Irish sounds. Along with winning multiple local honors for its live shows and recordings, Jackdaw has amassed a solid fanbase in areas ranging from South Buffalo to Northern Ireland—virtually any place where barnstorming, uptempo music is enjoyed.