Jour de Fred

Arenas? Who needs arenas?

2009-10-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

I really don’t know when I’ll go to see an arena show again. At least not unless I’m being paid to write about it.

That was one of my conclusions as I walked out of the Quaker Meeting House in Orchard Park Friday night. I had gone with my daughter, Abby, to see Dan Berggen, Dan Duggan and Peggy Lynn – the trio aka Jamcrackers. If you want to check out what they sound like, go to http://www.berggrenfolk.com/ and http://www.esperanceproductions.com/ and http://www.quercusmusic.com/.

It occurred to me that although I would love to see the Springsteen & the E Street Band show at HSBC Arena in November, I probably won’t put down the bucks. Part of it is that the best remaining seats seem to be nearly behind the stage and cost $81 bucks, once you figure in all the charges. You can easily spend several hundred on floor tickets if you go through some ticket brokers.

Of all of the big-time rockers, Springsteen is the one artist who would tempt me most to spend that kind of money. But, to be honest, with two kids in college and another one nearing it, I don’t have the money.

And when I go to see a show like the Jamcrackers, I don’t need to go to an arena. The trio, all acclaimed solo folies as well as Jamcrackers, are regulars in the Adirondack region. The Dans are old friends; I used to do websites for both.

Together they make music that is uplifting, funny, moving, spiritual and energetic. They engage the audience – frequently on a personal level. Their music has depth, and they’ve got some incredible skills. They’re a little like Springsteen in all those regards. Without the hundreds of feet separating you from the stage.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons they’re able to make those connections.

Seeing live music in small venues, that' can be the rule rather than the exception. In the past few months I’ve had chances to see Greg Klyma (BTW, go see him Wednesday live at Allen Hall in Buffalo – for free!) , Gurf Morlix and Grant Hart in house concerts. I’ve seen Commander Cody, Bill Kirchen and the Twangbangers and a host of others at the Sportsman’s Tavern, and Mark Norris & the Backpeddlers at WBFO live broadcast.

Arenas? Who needs arenas?

My own Continental coverage

2009-10-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

I went up to Buffalo to see what was happening last Thursday. Here's what I saw.

Continental Coverage ...

2009-09-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've used this forum, but I figure it's time to bring it back to life.

Here's the issue today: media coverage of the demolition of the Continental, the old black box punk club on Franklin Street in downtown Buffalo. It was a lot of things for a lot of people. Soon it will be a high-end hotel (or at least the parking garage for one) for business folk visiting Buffalo?

So how did the media cover it?

Here's coverage from Channel 4 (WIVB, the CBS affiliate):

And now here's Channel 7 (WKBW, the ABC affiliate):

And if the embedded video is behaving a little strangely (and it seems to be that way off and on), you can view it at http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/61264502.html?video=YHI&t=a.

And here's the Buffalo News version: http://www.buffalonews.com/409/story/807030.html

So what do you think? Who got it right? The people who focused on the new hotel or the old Continental?

Sex, Lies and the Smoking Gun: Politics and Journalism

2009-05-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

Whoever came up with that title for a forum at the downtown library in Buffalo has a way with headlines.

Of course, as in the National Enquirer, the headline oversold the story a bit. Still it was an interesting night, hearing former newspaper and TV reporter and current St. Bonaventure Journalism Dean Lee Coppola, Business First Publisher Jack Connors and WGRZ-TV icon Rich Kellman – and the audience – get a chance to talk about journalism and scandals.

The short synopsis? Scandals sell.

No news there, but there were plenty of observations on the news media. Among them:

Coppola quoted CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (Bonas’ commencement speaker) answering a student query on why the network keeps repeating stories, endlessly, through the 24-hour news cycle: “Because we don’t know when you’re watching.” So I guess you get what you deserve if you watch too much cable news!

Coppola also said the “responsible media find it very uncomfortable to cover stories of immorality.” Which may be why the National Enquirer broke the story on presidential candidate John Edwards’ affair with a campaign videomaker.

Kellman cast the Erie County budget debacle in a meta-story context – WGRZ getting to play the role of hero, with former Erie County Executive Joel Giambra as Darth Vaderesque villain? Was it fair? Maybe not, but Giambra did get caught totally mismanaging the county. And, as Kellman pointed out, the audience needs a STORY.

Kellman credited former WGRZ reporter Stefan Mychajliw (now unrepentant chief apologist for the Buffalo city schools) for his ability to simplify and clarify the story to draw the audience into the stories.

“We were doing our duty as journalists, but it was also good for ratings … an ideal situation,” said Kellman.

Kellman described the situation as a “black swan,” a phrase I hadn’t heard before. It’s a situation that is totally unexpected, but fortuitous – at least for the TV station and its news ratings. It apparently takes its inspiration from “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that has sold a heck of a lot of copies.

Connors provided some reminders that most newspapers had histories as political organs. The Buffalo Courier (and later the Courier Express), for example, was once owned by waterfront boss “Fingy” Connors (damn, I forgot to ask if they were related!) as a forum for pressing his agenda.

Connors (Jack, that is, not Fingy) also drew a line between moral scandals (Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky) and misuse of public funds/abuse of power. Bill Clinton’s approval ratings, Connors said, rose during the scandal and subsequent impeachment.

So there you have it. Not too much mention of Alexander Hamilton (the forum was part of a series of events commemorating the great man – who also had an affair with a friend’s wife. Hamilton’s wife, by the way, stood by him when it was revealed).

With such great source material, there were other items that could have drawn more attention. For example, the press’ dealings with Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, the slave Jefferson apparently had an affair (and children) with. I’ve read that the criticism was so severe it made Jefferson almost rue his support of a free press (including the oft-quoted: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”).

Mention was made of Grover Cleveland’s love-child, but not much of how it was handled in the media. According to a story in U.S. News & World Report on past presidents’ indiscretions, The Buffalo Evening Telegraph ran a story headlined, “A Terrible Tale: A Dark Chapter in a Public Man's History: The Pitiful Story of Maria Halpin and Governor Cleveland's Son." The resultant rhyme was “"Ma, Ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!"

Meanwhile, Cleveland’s opponent, James Blaine, was knee deep in corruption accusations as the 1884 election approached.

As per Jack Connors’ observation, Cleveland won.

Pine Doggin'

2009-01-24T22:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T17:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T17:10:00.000-08:00

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"

2009-01-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

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.

Roller-coaster ride

2008-12-10T10:34:00.001-08:00

So this is how it is on the other side of the microphone.

On Sunday night at the Sportsmen’s Tavern in Buffalo, the Demo Daddies gave their debut public performance. That’s the band I sing with, and it was the first rock ‘n’ roll show of my life (excepting singing Carl Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues” with a blues band in a college bar in the late ‘70s).

As somebody who has written about musicians more times than I can recall, it’s good to get the other perspective. For instance, I’m starting to understand performer’s paranoia.

The show Sunday night was a rush of adrenaline. The band was great, and the audience was friendly ... enthusiastic even. It was fun to have a chance to sing my songs for a group of people that had mostly never heard them.

I’ve had a chance to listen to the show (reminder to self: never listen to shows that have been recorded through the microphones on video cameras). I went to sleep Tuesday night thinking I stink. Good band; lousy singer. Who would even come to hear it.

Now it’s Wednesday. Was it really that bad? Probably not. Nobody ran from the bar screaming. I still think the songs are pretty damned good and the band was great. I probably wasn’t as good as I like to hear myself in my head, but I suspect I wasn’t as bad as what I was hearing in my head last night.

But now I have a better understanding of the insecurities of the job of going up on stage and belting out songs for an audience, and for the need for reassurance that you actually are good.

It’s one show and it’s a roller-coaster, the build-up and the letdown.

No wonder people who actually do that for a living end up so screwed up.

Time to finally do it!

2008-12-06T12:37:00.000-08:00

OK. For the past 27 years, I've been writing about musicians and the sounds they make.

For the past year or so I've been telling people about the music I make.

Tomorrow (Sunday, Dec. 7, 4 p.m.), people will get a chance to come out and find out what the critic actually sounds like. That's a scary thought.

The site is the Sportsmen's Tavern, 326 Amherst St., in Buffalo. It's sort of cool that I'll get to play on the same stage that has seen Dave Alvin, Peter Case, Wanda Jackson, Dale Watson and a ton of great local talent perform over the past few years.

The recording, under the name of the Demo Daddies, was made with Matt Smith, former guitarist for Scott Carpenter & the Real McCoys and the Headhunters. Lately he's been leading a group called the Hammond Shutdown and playing with Roger Bryan & the Orphans. Matt plays everything, while I did the lyrics and basic melodies. One full song and a couple of the clips from the album (titled They Don't Write 'em (like that anymore) are posted at www.myspace.com/thedemodaddies.

Over the past few months, the Demo Daddies have been coming together as a band. In addition to Matt, Charlie Gannon (bass for Real McCoys, Dee Adams), Brian Daddis (drummer for the Real McCoys) and Tyler Harrington III (guitar for Doombuggy) have rounded out the group. Damn, the band is good. I'd pay to hear these guys.

Now tomorrow we'll find out whether anybody will come to see us, though. Admission is free. The Sportsmen is a cool place, an old country place on the edge of Black Rock that has become a gathering place for honky tonk fans and old punks alike. I think the crowd will be good, and I know the band will be great.

But I'm starting to understand that piece of performers' anxiety; I'm having this dream that I'm up there on stage by myself. Even the band has forgotten to come. ... That's one dream I'm hopin doesn't come true!

Tom

2008-11-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Buffalo News Photo/Bill Wippert

This blog started, in part, with the passing of one of my former co-workers at the Buffalo News, Jay Bonfatti. Now another great guy -- and great journalist -- is gone.

Tom Borrelli died this morning. The News' story is at http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/499559.html. He had been in the news since his fall while covering a high school football game.

Most people outside of the paper might know him as the paper's lacrosse and fantasy sports reporter, but within the paper he was mostly an editor. In the sports department, that meant everything from doing rewrite (handling stories off the phone) to copy editing to assembling and laying out the entire section.

And there was nobody you'd rather be working with than the Ox (as he was tagged) when it came down to getting the job done. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of sports (amid a department filled with people fitting that description ... and whose league I was never in), he could whip together a college football roundup off the wire, assemble a scoreboard page, handle some spillover from the high school phone calls -- and keep track of his fantasy baseball team, "the Oxen Train" -- all at the same time.

On top of that, he was the top practical joker and password hacker on the floor. If you received a message from somebody you didn't know too well at the News inviting you for a "piping hot cup of java" or attempting to sell you chocolate toads for their child's junior possum scout troop, you knew where it was really coming from.

As with Jay, Tom's friends were his family. And once you were a friend, you stayed one. ... I guess I'm stunned today, in part, because Ox was such a big character (both physically and figuratively), that I expected him to bounce back, to be sending those kinds of messages from a hospital bed while he wrote fantasy sports columns on a laptop, making his way back to the newsroom.

In my 23 years at The News (including about 10 working a desk away from Tom), I learned that the public's vision of the paper is of the bylined reporters, but the heart of the organization was the inside people who were fixing the reporters' errors, deciding what gets covered and just pounding away to make sure the paper gets out every day.

That heart is crying today.

Fredonia election coverage/convergence style

2008-11-06T05:13:00.000-08:00

It was a momentous election, and some monumental coverage by Fredonia students, IMHO.

Posted here are a few photos I took at WCVF while it was all going on. I meant to take photos at the Leader and WNYF, but forgot. The productions came off very well, I thought.

Election night was the TV station's first newscast of the year, so the atmosphere was a bit frenetic, but they pulled it off. ... At the radio station, it was cool to see the TV station's live-linked camera in the interview studio, while calls were coming in from Erie County, Jamestown, Manhattan and places beyond. Both stations had teams of people watching news feeds, analyzing when they could add states to each candidate's tally. The Leader -- in the midst of a redesign, BTW -- was supplying the photos as needed.

It was a great night, and a great first step for campus media.

Convergence in Action

2008-11-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

I'm psyched for tomorrow night, and not just because the election results will finally be coming in (it's rather like the Super Bowl for newsies).
The campus radio station, TV station and newspaper at Fredonia will be working together on their campaign coverage and doing it in a pretty big way. So if you're in the Dunkirk-Fredonia area, check it out on cable or on WCVF-FM (88-9). And look for the Leader next week.
It's going to be a fun night, a little like walking the wire without a net. Stay tuned!
BTW, you can check out the site the three share at http://fredportal.com/.
It's just in its infancy stage, but I think it's going to be great down the line. And, yes, for transparency's sake, I'm involved with it, but the students are the real driving force behind it -- which is as it should be.

Talk Show Over the Edge?

2008-10-29T11:00:00.001-07:00

When does a talk show go over the edge? Well, we got to hear "when" on Wednesday, Oct. 29, in Buffalo.

I was listening to WBEN (930 am) on my drive to Fredonia in the morning. It's been fun lately because the conservative talk show branch of the Republican party has been squealing louder and louder as the election nears and polls show Obama ahead.

But on Wednesday, talker Tom Bauerle went over the edge. OK, he's just being ignorant when he refers to Obama as the Kenya-born Marxist Barack Hussein Obama. He's refusing to recognize evidence Obama was born in Hawaii, he's showing an ignorance of Marxism and he's stoking anti-Muslim resentment (and suggesting Obama is Muslim, which he isn't). In other words, it's typical talk show bottom feeding.

But on Oct. 29 (or earlier today if you're already reading it), he made comparison's between Obama's potential election and Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Then he made a statement to the effect, "not that Obama's planning to send Jews to concentration camps ... not that I would put that past him." For approximately 10 minutes afterward Bauerle continued on a hate-filled diatribe in which he tried to explain how Jews and Catholics should never vote for Obama.

He did everything but call for a sniper to put Obama out of his misery -- Bauerle's misery, that is. His talk show sank into hate speech -- not hate speech in the legal sense, but in the sense that encourages hate of those who disagree with you. Talk show hosts aren't good winners, and they're something much worse as potential losers.

WBEN is a commercial venture and has the right to put anybody it wants on the air, but I would humbly suggest that people start complaining to the sponsors of a show that has gone this far beyond responsible speech. Why would any company want to sponsor this kind of talk?

Involvement

2008-10-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of no longer being on staff at the Buffalo News is that I can get politically involved, if I want. ... For the most part, I don't want.

But I may just throw $25 into an online fundraiser for Barack Obama. It isn't because I'm crazy about Obama. I simply put very little faith in p0liticians as a whole.

But it's just infuriating seeing what McCain & Co. have been doing with the whole ACORN issue. It seems like they're laying the groundwork for their protests if, as projected, the lose on Nov. 4.

As I understand it, in most states ACORN is required to turn in whatever registrations are collected -- accurate or not. That's the call of the local Board of Elections, not ACORN's. And even if people are illegally registered, it doesn't matter unless they try to vote -- in which case, Elvis Presley or Dale Earnhardt or whomever they're registered as will be liable if they're voting illegally.

So the Republicans seem to be doing their best to take the vote out of people's hands -- particularly if those people were registered by ACORN and happen to be black and likely to support Obama. By going after ACORN, they can scare people away from the polls for the vote and then challenge the results later.

And I can send my $25 to the Obama campaign.

After further review...

2008-10-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

One of the things about writing a review right after a show is that you invariably think of things later that you wish you had put in, or things that you had planned to put in and forgot.

Last night I went to the Fall Acoustic Showcase put on by WYRK-FM at the University at Buffalo's Center for the Arts. The place was sold out. The review is at http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/464965.html

What things didn't make it into the review? Well, I was using a horse racing handicapping metaphor and I wanted to refer to Ashton Shepherd as "the mudder, I mean, mother of the field. After all, she's got a 3-year-old son." That one didn't make it; maybe that was a little too much pun-ishment for the reader.

And I wish I had done more to describe Jamey Johnson's voice. Phrases that came to mind included, "a sounds as gnarled as a live oak, with a powerful bass thrum like a locomotive rolling through the night ... Or like Hank Williams Jr. or Waylon Jennings on depressents."

Nontheless, it was a fun show and a good one to review. I think that other than the Sportsmen's Tavern, the UB shows are my favorite forum to hear country music.

Another thought on Palin...

2008-09-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

Is anybody else bothered by the fact the Republican vice presidential candidate was flown into New York and introduced to foreign heads of state for briefings even though she has no national job? Henry Kissinger is no problem ... He's just a Republican functionary, so he's fair game.

But something about meeting with the foreign leaders just doesn't seem appropriate. But then, the more that comes out about Sarah Palin, the more it appears she doesn't like to play by the rules (rather like Dick Cheney, if you check this interview with Washington Post reporter and Cheney profiler Barton Gellman.

How did this happen? Here's how.

2008-09-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

Well, here's my little piece of the past week's financial meltdown.

A couple of year's ago, my wife and I took out a second mortgage on our house. It made sense financially.

But when we applied for the second mortgage, the guy on the other end of the phone essentially got it approved without ever having an appraisal done. Our part of Erie County has some relatively low real estate prices (at least for 95-year-old houses that could use some work), but he pushed it through at about 30 percent more than we felt it was worth.

The thought seemed to be, "well, that's so low, we can just add another $40,000 onto the value. ... Oh, and would you like some more money? Maybe another $10,000 or $20,000 to spend on whatever you want."

We didn't. And no balloon payments either, thank God. But is it any wonder that companies like Countrywide are on the brink? What I'm wondering now is if the company that owns the mortgage goes under, what happens to the people who have mortgages with that company who are still paying faithfully every month?

Meanwhile, a whole economy was built on that kind of loans. See Michael Greenberger's explanation on Terry Gross' "Fresh Air" on NPR if you want to start to understand it all.

Gathering of the Tribe

2008-09-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

I didn't stay through the end of the Music Is Art festival behind the Albright Knox museum in Buffalo Saturday afternoon. It was just starting to rain when I left during the afternoon during the 12-hour event.

I was there long enough, though, to appreciate once again what MIA serves as in the Buffalo rock and art communities -- as a tribal gathering.

It doesn't happen often. Too often it has been for the funerals of its high priests -- the wakes, funerals and get-togethers after the deaths of Mark Freeland and Tim Switala spring to mind.

But MIA has taken on the role of an annual reunion, where the non-blood relatives who make up the Buffalo music family in particular come out to play brief sets and reacqaint themselves.

That it mixes together kids bands ( like teen band winners Inlite) and the weird (Those Idiots -- a horn-powered band with a Meatloafian lead singer that finished off their set with a reworking of the Kiss song into "Rock 'n' Roll All Nite [and Polka Every Day]") is a great bonus. And the art is WAY more interesting than the Allentown Art Festival.

The site was new, after a year's exile at the Erie County Fair (sorry, the vibes didn't mix) and following several years on Franklin Street. The Albright Knox site was good ... the only drawback being that the bands on two of the three main stages were a little removed from the crowd. It was harder for the bands to connect with their audience.

But music was only part of the show. Robby Takac of the Goo Goo Dolls is the spark behind the event (along with his father, who handles a lot of the prep), along with a host of volunteers. So thanks, Robby, for a chance to assemble the tribe ... without need of a funeral.

Mrs. Shepard comes to town

2008-09-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Judy Shepard, the mother of hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard, will be speaking at SUNY Fredonia's Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall on Sunday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m.

Matthew, of course, was the 21-year-old gay man who was robbed, beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in 1998. That was near the Unversity of Wyoming, where he went to school.

The two perpetrators are in prison on murder and kidnapping charges, but Shepard's death was what it took for that state to create hate crime laws.

Shepard's death spurred an outpouring of reaction. When I hear his name, I always think of the song, "Human, Like You," by my friend Greg Klyma. Greg is a great singer-songwriter who makes his living as a traveling troubadour (you should hear him tell his story about getting stopped by cops out west ... for driving too slow).

Anyway, when I first met Greg, he was a young songwriter full of potential. I wrote about him in the late, great magazine No Depression, and later did his website for awhile. I think he's really fulfilled that potential and even gone beyond that. You can judge for yourself at http://www.klyma.com, which he does a fine job on himself now.

Meanwhile, here's that song, "Human, Like You." If you ever hear it, Mrs. Shepard, I hope if offers you some solace that Matthew's life inspired people to stand up and speak out against intolerance and violence.

Secret Life of the American Palin

2008-09-02T07:05:00.001-07:00

Has anybody noticed yet that national politics and the ABC Family channel seem to be getting mixed up.

If you've got teenage daughters and cable, you're probably aware of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." The storyline revolves around a 15-year-old who becomes pregnant and her circle of friends, including one family of sincere but holier-than-though evangelical Christians. There's even the jerky dad of the baby, a self-centered jockish serial seducer, and a younger brother who has Down Syndrome.

It would seem at first glance that Molly Ringwald ... Oops, I mean Sarah Palin, has enough on her plate without learning how to handle state funerals and the potential leadership of the free world if John McCain croaks. I just wish this soap opera wasn't quite so real.

Other blogs ...

2008-09-02T06:48:00.001-07:00

When things happen, journalists write. It's what we do.

Below are links to some of the other sites with reactions to the loss of Jay.

http://buddbailey.blogspot.com/2008/08/john-f-bonfatti.html

http://buffaloroots.blogspot.com/2008/08/jay-john-f-bonfatti-friend-to-all.html

http://marykunzgoldman.com/2008/08/tough-day.html

I suspect there are some others as well.

E

Way too soon ...

2008-08-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

The newsroom at the Buffalo News was a somber place today, friends tell me.

It will be a lot quieter for a long time, too, with the sudden passing of reporter Jay Bonfatti.

It will probably be in the paper tomorrow, but Jay -- just 52 -- died last night or early this morning while on vacation in the Cape Cod area with his extended family. Apparently he died of heart attack in his sleep.

But what makes it saddest for the people at 1 News Plaza, and a great many others too, is that we were all family when it came to Jay.

He was an excellent reporter and writer -- trained at the unofficial university known as the Associated Press to be both quick and accurate. He was good, but he knew never to take himself too seriously to have fun.

But he was also the guy in the newsroom who welcomed all the interns and provided a reminder that we were in a newsroom, not an actuarial office. He had few pretensions, but he had a knack for puncturing those of others with his humor. And he could take it himself too.

I remember almost 20 years ago when he was coaching one of the softball teams in the Buffalo media league, when my 3-year-old daughter was coming with my wife and I to games. Her response when seeing Jay -- in a gray sweatsuit and never particularly skinny -- was something to the effect of "Mom and Dad ... is that the saggy, baggy elephant?" She'd just been read the book of the name.

He took it well, but I'm sure he would have loved the chance to give her back some gibes now that she's an adult.

It was the friendships, I think, that brought Jay back to Buffalo after his AP career had taken him to the bigger pond of Philadelphia. Here he got to write some pretty cool stuff -- including a series that had taken him on an ecological tour of the Great Lakes last fall.

But it was the people that kept him here. When I left The News for the last time on Aug. 1, we hosted a happy hour with the Steam Donkeys at the Sportsman's Tavern. Near the end of the night, when my wife and I took to the floor for a slow dance to the Donkeys' "Dance Through the Rubbish" (Buck Quigley's classic about a dance in the wake of the party), Jay turned his camera from the band to us, taking some video. He said later he'd be sending us a copy.

Typical Jay. He loved the party, but he was always willing to give to others.,

So anyway, it's about time I started up a blog. This will be a place to write about journalism and other stuff that I find interesting. I think Jay would appreciate being the one to encourage me to just start doing it.

This one's for him.

Elmer Ploetz