Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact

Last Minute Gift Guide

The Storm is Coming

Have you ordered the goose? Picked up some wine? Found a book for Aunt Mabel and a CD for Uncle Harold? What are you getting for your mother? What are you getting for your brother? What are you getting for that person you wake up beside every morning? Have you figured out if, when, and how you’ll wrap all these hypothetical gifts?

Week in Review

Dinner Among Friends

by Geoff Kelly

Odds and Ends

by Geoff Kelly

A Short Walk on a Long Pier

by Aaron Lowinger

Scorecard: The Week's Winners and Losers

by Zachary Burns

Getting a Grip

That Stuff'll Kill You

by Michael I. Niman

It’s remarkable what we seem to get used to. By now, most readers of this column have seen viral YouTube footage of peaceful Occupy protestors being pepper-sprayed by aggressive cops in riot costumes. The words “pepper” and “spray” have come together to form a verb.

News Analysis

Little Big Victories

by Bruce Fisher

It is no small achievement that the Erie County Legislature restored almost $1 million to the small cultural organizations that might have gone lights-out under the outgoing Republican county executive’s last budget.

Guest Essay

Where Progressives and Libertarians Meet

by Ted P. Schmidt

Divide and rule. It’s the tried-and-true method by which a minority controls the majority, and it’s as old as governance itself.

Last Minute Gift Guide

Season's Eatings

by Jennifer Mogensen

Sugar, spice, and everything nice: great gifts for food lovers and for yourself

Last Minute Gift Guide

Gifts For Gadget Gurus

by Cory Perla

The Gadget Guru on your gift list is probably the kind of person who has everything, so you’ll have to get creative. The best way to do that is to go with something cutting-edge and new.

Last Minute Gift Guide

Keep 'Em Cozy

by Jill Greenberg

Even though this winter has been creeping in like a lamb (like a daydreaming, behind-the-pack, slow-as-molasses lamb), don’t let your guard down. This is still Buffalo, which is known for lake-effect snow, surprise storms, and a lion’s roar of chill.

Last Minute Gift Guide

Last-Minute Utilitarian Gifts

by Buck Quigley

’Tis the season when you can’t glance at a TV without seeing a commercial where good-looking lovers frolic in a snowy landscape, or cuddle around a crackling fire—before a small box is produced containing a sparkling diamond ring or necklace.

Winter Drinks

Ho Ho Ho... and A Shot of Rum

by Donny Kutzbach

It happened a little later than usual, but the sub-32-degree temperatures and blustery winds of winter have finally taken a grip on the Queen City. The idea of a cold weather drink here might make a few people scratch their heads. This is Buffalo, right?

Theater Week

The Holiday Guys

by Anthony Chase

Jeffry Denman, the Buffalo native and Astaire Award nominee who was in the original Broadway cast of Mel Brooks’s The Producers and appeared in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, is coming home for the holidays. What’s more, he’s bringing one of his Broadway buds back with him, specifically, three-time Tony Award nominee Marc Kudisch, star of such Broadway shows as Thoroughly Modern Millie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and 9 to 5.

Theater News

Stagefright

by Javier

Film, TV, and stage star Barry Bostwick was recently in New York to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the musical Grease, which officially opened on Broadway in February 1972.

Artvoice B.O.O.M!

Round 2, Week 3: Contagious Woo vs. Big Casino

Congratulations to Mr. Boneless for winning last week’s online showdown. With that win, they secure a spot in the next BOOM live show, coming up on January 14 at Nietzsche’s.

Art Scene

Briding the Gap

by Jack Foran

Paintings and masks by Thomas Edwards at C. G. Jung Center

by J. Tim Raymond

Buffalo Society of Artists 115th Catalogue Exhibition at UB Anderson Gallery

by J. Tim Raymond

Film Feature

Renovated Flix Theater Reopens

by M. Faust

Lancaster may be a little out of the way for Buffalo filmgoers, but if you prefer to see new movies with the best possible presentation, you’re going to start spending some time there. Flix Theaters has just finished a floor-to-ceiling renovation that makes it the most state-of-the-art screening venue in Western New York.

Film Reviews

Young Adult

by George Sax

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

by M. Faust

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, December 16 - Thursday, December 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 7th Annual Every Time I Die Christmas Show, on Friday the 16th at Club Infinity.

Classical Music Notes

The Last Nutcracker

by Jan Jezioro

Over the last few weeks classical music lovers and lovers of the dance have had the opportunity to enjoy a half dozen or so live productions of The Nutcracker, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s beloved Christmas ballet, as well as several broadcast versions. So, you might well ask why would anyone want to see yet another?

You Auto Know

Fast Cars and Faster Gifts

by Jim Corbran

First, let’s get the obvious gift suggestion out of the way. Someone you know and love wants a new car. Here are my down-and-dirty quick picks: VW GTI, Ford Fiesta hatchback, Mazda MX5. And if you simply must have more room, a Dodge Caravan should work for anybody. Okay. Now for some car-related gifts that you might actually buy.

5 Questions With...

Richard Kegler: Font Designer

You probably don’t think about it often, but type is all around us and the variable shapes and styles of it has a profound influence on the way we look at the world. Kegler is president and a designer at Buffalo’s P22 Type Foundry, an influential design studio which has been crafting new styles of letters since 1994.

Letters to Artvoice

Buffalo: Embrace the Occupy Challenge to Become Known as the City of Enlightenment!

by Carl Mrozek

New York City, Chicago, Denver, LA, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, are among a growing list of US cities to use brute force to close down Occupy encampments in the past two weeks.

Offbeat news

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

Only the Government: Stung by criticism in 2007 that they were neglecting severely wounded service members, the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have now gone extreme the other way, routinely providing at least a half-dozen (and as many as two dozen) caseworkers per patient.

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Amazon is the second longest river in the world, and has such a voluminous flow that it comprises 20 percent of all river water in the world. And yet there is not a single bridge that crosses it. I love that fact.

Advice

Ask Anyone

When I was a kid, an aunt used to give me a $2 bill in a fancy envelope every Christmas. (At the time, no one told me about $2 bills and bad luck, though I guess that would explain a lot about my accident-prone youth.) She’d tell me to save it for a rainy day but of course I spent it right away on whatever caught my eye at age six and up: candy, balsa wood airplanes, whatever.