Pine Doggin'

What is it that makes me love the Pine Dogs? Oh, great songs in a classic American rock 'n' roll style. Two great singers in Gretchen Schulz and Jim Whitford, with Gretchen adding in some great stage presence. Whitford's do-it-all guitar. An accessible, humorous stage presence that guitarist Don Vincent, bassist Tommy Fischer and drummer Jim Celeste help cement, turning may of their fans into their friends.

But like a lot of my favorite Buffalo bands (Steam Donkeys, Scott Carpenter & Real McCoys, most of Terry Sullivan's projects, to name a few off the top of my head), for reasons now buried in the past they never met with commercial success they deserved.

But the fans remember. In fact, Saturday night's show was another of the "family reunions" that Buffalo shows so often turn into. At one point singer and guitarist Gretchen Schulz started name-checking the people in the audience -- from the stage.

The band played over three hours, over 30 songs -- largely their originals. The audience mouthed the words to the songs, and the girls danced like it was 1989 -- albeit with a little more bounce to the ounce to match the gray growing in the guys' hair -- if they still have it. The Pine Dogs did their signature mix of American rock 'n' roll, with a ton of songs by guitarist and singer Whitford, but some by almost every member.

It was great to see Vincent back on second guitar. While the band continued after his departure several years into the band's existence (in 1995, just past halfway into the band roughly 1989 to '98 prime years; , his leaving took a little away from the group's glue. It's great to have him back for the occasional reunion shows.

This is music that should have been hits. On Saturday night, for a few hours on Amherst Street n Buffalo for a set of old friends, it was again.

BTW, here's a youtube video shot at a show as part of one of the area's summer series, with lots of kids jumping around on stage with the band. They're performing "What You Want."



If you get a chance to catch them again, don't miss it.

Road to DC, part 2

Washington ... what a trip.

That's both figuratively and literally. Our Fredonia group's expedition to Washington for the inauguration was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

It's a good thing that we went in with the expectation that we had no expectations. We just wanted to be there for the moment.

Most of us really wanted to be on the National Mall. Only one of us -- Buffalo State student Mandy, who traveled with us but stayed with a friend in DC -- actually made it there, though.




The rest of us tried, though. The Ploetz group got up at 4 a.m. and left the hostel by 4:30 (later than many of the others staying there). You can check out the video above. Coffee was hard to come by at that hour -- the line from the Starbucks stretched around the block.

The maps weren't really well marked to show which paths went to the national mall, where we could see the inauguration on Jumbotrons, and which went to the parade path along Pennsylvania Avenue.

The cops and the volunteers weren't much help either. The answers kept changing. We finally ended up in a line by 14th Street, which despite what somebody in a law enforcement uniform had told me, was for the parade.

It was also, however, by the National Press Club building, which explains how we got interviewed by TV crews from Sweden and Japan and by an Australian radio journalist. It may also have had something to do with my wife, Sandi, wearing an Uncle Sam-style felt top hat.

And, yes, it was cold. Bone-chillin' cold. We wound up on the parade route, where the parade didn't actually start until about 3:30 or 4 p.m. The crowds were cheerful and relatively patient despite the bitter chill, and then there was the squirrel.

I'm actually taking other people's word on this. Apparently a gray squirrel was playing near the feet of a disabled lady in front of us. People were taking photos of it.

But then something startled the squirrel, it bounced to the top of the lady's chair -- or perhaps her shoulder -- and bounced again. I felt something smack my ski cap and asked who had been throwing things into the crowd, only to be told I had been ... squirreled. The squirrel was smart enough to disappear into the shrubs behind us.

We waited. And waited. We talked with a guy from Minnesota who was waiting for his son to march in the parade. His son was playing clarinet in a group marching in the fifth of six divisions.

A city commissioner was taking photos with a very nice digital SLR camera. He said he had a ticket to sit inside the enclosed area in front of Washington's Wilson Building -- the city hall -- but he couldn't get across the parade route to get there. I guess you really don't mess with the feds.

Two girls from Australia stuck it out longer than us. Their faces were a wind-burned pink from the 20-plus-mph winds.

An older African-American woman was there in a wheelchair. Her son said they left New Jersey at 2 a.m. to get there. She insisted on coming. We wondered if the cold might be enough to do her in, but apparently she survived.

Meanwhile, others from our traveling group had repaired to the Capitol City Brewing Company, where the view was better and the Inauguration Ale flowed. They caught their own part of the experience - perhaps a bit more sensibly!

By the time we left (just after Joe Biden passed), we were frozen nearly stiff. Every part of my body hurt when I moved. Most of it hurt when I didn't.

But we were able to bring home some memories of a historic moment for America -- and memories of our personal reasons for being there.

Road to DC, part 1

Whew ... it's been a whirlwind the last few days. Interviewed by media from three continents. Hit in the head by a squirrel. Chilled to the bone. Thrilled to be there.

Yes, we went to Washington for the inauguration, our first in person.

By us, I mean a group of Fredonia students, Dr. Linda Brigance, Lecturer Amber Rinehart and my family. Thanks to the youth hostel in Washington we had an affordable and convenient place to stay.

I'm sure each of us had our own reasons for going. I'm not sure the network broadcasters got it quite right for many of us, though. Yes, it was an historic moment when the first African-American president officially took over the job.

But I think for many of those in the throngs throughout the capitol city, there was more to it than that. There seemed to be a sense that something bigger was going on, a sense of hope that politics could change from what it had sunk to in the last eight years. That was what the pilgrims wanted to be part of; they wanted to say, "yes, we believe this country can be more than it has been, and we're here to reinforce the points that were made on Nov. 4."

Woodstock without the drugs? Maybe. It was definitely a gathering of the tribe -- those who have been ashamed of the actions of our country's government since 9/11, and idealistic enough to think the directions can be changed.

Expectations are so high for Barack Obama that he's bound to disappoint many of his supporters down the road. But for a few days it was good to set my reportorial skepticism aside and believe.

(More tk -- including the squirrel story -- in Part 2)

Will Eisner's "The Spirit"

Wow, it's been a bit too long since the last post, but here it is.

The impetus, in this case, is the new Frank Miller film, his version of Will Eisner's classic comic, The Spirit. It was, to say the least, bad. But deliciously bad.

There were times when I was doubled over in laughter, stomping the floor ... literally. Of course, that was made easier by the fact that after one guy left a half hour into the film my daughter and I were the only ones in the theater. We didn't have to worry a out being embarrassed.

God knows, the story doesn't do justice to Eisner's comic -- a visionary noir set of comics that ran in comic books accompanying the Sunday comics from 1940 to about 1952. Eisner's style was frequently tongue-in-cheek, but filled with the grit of the big cities that carried his book. He was also a master of weaving storylines into short O. Henry type tales.

Miller's version of The Spirit is big and frequently pointless, characteristics which Eisner would never have allowed himself.

But while Miller never reaches Eisner's depths, he forges his own sense of over-the-top humor, a kind of camp take on the character. Needless to say, the legion of Eisner fans is mostly offended by the film.

But I keep coming back to scenes that gave me serious laughter -- in an absurdist, black humor bent. Samuel L. Jackson's villain, the Octopus, steals the show, whether he's donning Nazi paraphernalia or vaporizing kittens. In fact, Gabriel Macht, who plays the Spirit, is the least interesting character on screen. The women -- as in Eisner's work -- are stunning, from Eva Mendes as jewel thief Sand Saref to Scarlett Johanssen as Silken Floss, the Octopus' assistant.

The dialogue is frequently hokey and the plot doesn't always hang, but The Spirit strikes me as a film that could go down as a so-bad-it's-fun cult piece in the long run. And, yup, I'll plunk down the money for the DVD when it comes out for that alone.