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Week in Review

A Question for Leon Panetta

by Geoff Kelly and Louis Ricciuti

Cuomo e Fermato a Busti Avenue

by Jack Foran

Meeting the New Boss

by Aaron Lowinger

Vive Le Resistance: Ex-Member of the Buffalo Five to Speak at Burning Books

by Buck Quigley

Special Report

The Best Mayor South Buffalo Ever Had

by Jim Heaney, InvestigativePost.org

Byron Brown’s track record of hiring African-American administrators—he doesn’t, for the most part—is surprising until you put it in a larger context.

News Analysis

In the Grip of Dimwits and Paranoids

by Bruce Fisher

It’s not just the anti-Semitic Glen Beck stirring up the fringe. Buffalo-born Richard Hofstadter long ago wrote The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and more recent historian Richard Perlstein estimates that since the Depression about 20 percent of American voters have been moved by wacky conspiracy theories that somehow always revolve around Jews, banks, and secret plans for socialism. Something new has happened: The loonies have taken over the House of Representatives.

Food for Thought

What a Tomato!

by Joe George

Three years ago it was the rabbits. They ate nearly everything, or at least everything they liked. Which was a lot.

Summer Food

Summer Recipes

by Jill Greenberg

Step away from your oven and avoid the stove. These recipes have fewer than 10 ingredients and will keep you nourished and cool. Once you have cooked with fresh ingredients, it will be hard to go back to cans and frozen options. Let these recipes inspire you to plant a garden of your own; perhaps start small with an herb garden.

Summer Food

Summer Food Events

by Jill Greenberg

This summer, avoid the burnout of restaurant-going as you hop from patio to patio and new restaurant to new restaurant. To be sure that you are treating yourself to the most seasonal culinary delights this summer, make an experience out of it and attend a food event. There you are sure to please your palate and keep things fresh before you snuggle back into your restaurant routine come winter.

Art Scene

Deconstructing Urbania

by Jack Foran

What is most interesting about James Vullo is how he takes from all directions, but makes what he takes his own, and gradually transitions over the course of a lifetime from blatantly imitative artist to unique artistic personality. All on show at the current Vullo exhibit, entitled Deconstructing Urbania, at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Theater Week

Chuck Basil Remembers Marvin Hamlisch

by Anthony Chase

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by Anthony Chase

Wide Write

MIght as Well Jump

by Keith Buckley

When your set time is late in the day, and there have been upwards of 10 bands beating the same path onto the stage over the course of the seven hours that have passed since doors were opened, and two of them dress like vampires (not the sexy, Twilight kind), you never know if the drops of blood you see on the monitor are real or just colored syrup that burst out of a pill during a guitar solo.

Film Reviews

The Campaign

by George Sax

Hope Springs, The Bourne Legacy, Ruby Sparks

by M. Faust

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, August 10 - Thursday, August 16)

Film Now Playing

Featured Events

See You There!

Artvoice's weekly round-up of featured events, including our editor's picks for the week: Buffalo's first ChalkFest, featuring 3D artist Michael Macauley, this Saturday and Sunday on the 500 block of Main Street.

Play Ball!

Touching Baseball History

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

Travel to Pittsburgh and visit the University of Pittsburgh campus, and you will have to search hard. Really hard. But then you’ll find it, right across from the main library: a brick wall with a stenciled marker on it, all covered with ivy and brush. That is the outfield wall of the old Forbes Field, the hallowed home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

You Auto Know

More FPH

by Jim Corbran

FPH of course, being “fun per horsepower.” And more than 900,000 buyers can’t be wrong since 1989.

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

Fern Cooper, 65, and 13 other cataract-surgery patients arrived at Ontario’s Oakville Trafalgar Hospital on June 25 to learn that they would not receive the usual anesthesia because the hospital had decided to schedule an “experimental day” to evaluate how unsedated patients responded.

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): When Tchaikovsky wrote the musical score for his famous 1812 Overture, it included 16 cannon shots. Literally. These blasts weren’t supposed to be made by, say, a sledgehammer pounded against a wooden mallet, but rather by the detonation of an actual cannon.

Advice

Ask Anyone

My son, who is a senior in high school this year, has just informed me that he doesn’t intend to go to college next year. Instead, he and a friend will get an apartment together here in Buffalo, find menial jobs, and take a year off—maybe a couple years, who knows?—before considering whether and where to apply.