Going, Going...

by Geoff Kelly

On November 10, the Albright-Knox announced its intention to sell about 200 antiquities and other historic works from its permanent collection. The artworks will be sold in a series of auctions conducted by Sotheby’s, beginning with a number of Chinese and Indian antiquities in March. African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian and American Indian art will be auctioned in May, as will Old Masters and pre-19th-century European art.

by Chuck Shepherd

■ Alternative-world online games like Second Life allow players to create identities and personalities, to communicate, and to interact commercially in a self-contained universe. Players buy, sell, invest and generate wealth using a virtual monetary system. Currently, Second Life players bump up against real-world taxes only if they earn real-world money from cashing out in-game wealth, but a congressional economist told Reuters in October that the House and Senate would soon be considering whether also to levy taxes on property and currency left inside the system (“virtual capital gains”). (Second Life’s in-game economy is so robust that it is growing at many times the rate of the US economy.) (The story was filed by a real-life reporter embedded as Reuters’ Second Life “bureau chief.”)

Most of the people I’ve talked to in Buffalo about the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s impending sale of 200 works from its (formerly) permanent collection seem deeply ambivalent about it. They hate to see all that nice, old stuff go, but, then, they think it’s important for the gallery to stay current in order to attract visitors and maintain its reputation as a “world-class” art museum.

The January Surprise

by Michael I. Niman

For the first time in quite a while there’s hope in the air. Or at least a little less despair. And it’s not because the Democrats took control of Congress. It’s because of which Democrats took control and why they were able to do it.

by Rob Brezsny

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “Whether we are on the threshold of a Golden Age or on the brink of a global cataclysm that will extinguish our civilization is not only unknowable, but undecided,” said Edward Cornish, President of the World Future Society. I bet that in the past year you’ve had comparable fantasies about the fate of your own personal destiny, Sagittarius. At times, it must have seemed as if you were teetering on the brink of a sulfurous abyss that was within shouting distance of the yellow brick road to paradise. Talk about conflicting emotions! But now that crazy-making chapter of your life story is coming to an end. No more teetering for you. No more inhaling noxious fumes from the infernal regions. I believe you have already been offered or will soon be offered an escort to the beginning of the yellow brick road. Let’s hope you’re not so addicted to the fascinating glamour of your pain that you turn down the escort.

The Performance of a Lifetime

by Albert Chao

Mudman—Kim Jones’ alterego—merges human body as sculpture at the Center for the Arts Gallery at the University at Buffalo in his first retrospective. Through collected drawings, paintings, sculpture and performance pieces, this alterego explodes violently in a whirlwind; shamanism blends with Satanism, fairytales with horror stories. His work, expanding over the two floors in the Lightwell, the first and second floors, is both tantalizing and repulsive.

by Anthony Chase

German playwright Frank Wedekind wrote his first full-length script, Frühlings Erwachen or Spring Awakening, in 1891. He would not see the play produced in Germany for another 15 years, and even then it was heavily censored. Wedekind, who is best known for the Lulu plays, had a talent to shock, but there is much more to the work than that. For over a century, Wedekind has proven to be fertile source material for scholars and avant-garde artists.

Return to Joy

by Marla Baykan

If you remember Club 31, Victor Hugo’s and DiGiulio’s on Allen, you will be thrilled to know the DiGiulio family has returned. This time, Joanne DiGiulio wisely chose a unique space on Hertel and brought the expertise of Chef Dunbar Berdine, the enthusiasm of Bar Manager Bill Donovan and an experienced wait staff to help out.

It's Superman! A Novel by Tom de Haven

by Jill Froebel

2006 was the year of Superman, with the release of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, starring the unknown actor Brandon Routh, and the subsequent release of Hollywoodland, an intimate look at the legends surrounding the death of the first man to play the superhero on any screen, George Reeves. The tale of Superman and the surrounding iconography has been pervasive in history since the inception of the character by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster in the 1930s. Many have told the tale of the “Man of Steel,” and done it well (and continue to do so, in weekly comic books and other media). Is there room for another addition to such an overcrowded pop-culture shelf?

Audi Doozy

by Jim Corbran

If you’re thinking the shape looks slightly familiar, you wouldn’t be far off if the next words out of your mouth were “Porsche 911.” The folks from Ingolstadt must have had the Porsche folks from Stuttgart in mind when they designed the R8. After all, it’s got that low, swoopy shape which, at least from the rear quarter view, is very 911-like. And isn’t the 911 the one sports car that we’ve all come to think of as at least slightly attainable? At least when compared to the likes of Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini. But look closely at the photo. That front quarter view still looks familiar, but—wait a minute, do we detect some Italian sports car in the mix? Come to think of it, doesn’t Audi now own the legendary Lamborghini line of sexy, mid-engine Italian supercars?

by Donny Kutzbach