Brown's Town

by Ken Ilgunas

Despite Byron Brown’s overwhelming victory in the Buffalo mayoral race, critics are skeptical as to whether he has what it takes to turn the city around. They call him a cookie-cutter politician, predicting that he will fall into the ranks of the many lackluster, forgettable mayors that preceded him. His strong ties with labor unions and his humdrum record as State Senator have people unconvinced. However, Brown is making bold claims about reforming Buffalo, and faithful supporters who wore “Let’s make history” t-shirts on Election Day believe he’s the only man for the job. Brown has told his followers that he wants to be the best mayor Buffalo ever had and aims to do so through improvements in education, the economy, and crime. While some Buffalonians are used to such spirited rhetoric from his predecessors, others believe he is the real thing. Does Byron Brown have what it takes?

Lisa Ann Ludwig

by Anthony Chase

Why you should know who she is: If you are a theater goer in Buffalo, chances are that you already know who she is! Lisa Ludwig is one of Buffalo’s most steadily working actors. She is most often featured in musicals, but she also boasts an impressive dramatic range. In addition, she often works as a director and as an educator. For the past thirteen years, she has directed the musicals at Iroquois High School, and at Amherst for the past four.

Recycling the Present with Robert Fitterman

by Michael Kelleher

I met poet Robert Fitterman at a reading I gave with Toronto poet Christian Bök at the Bowery Poets Club in New York last January. When I returned to Buffalo, Rob sent me a copy of his most recent book, Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Edge Books) The book is the third volume of Metropolis, a long poem-project Fitterman has been working on over the last decade or so. I soon went online and bought the first two volumes: Metropolis 1-15 and Metropolis 16-29. Each work is a kind of catalog of avant-garde strategies of writing, with poems ranging in form from found Internet texts to visual collages to hilarious deconstructions of pop song lyrics.

Sabres and Leafs Go At It Again

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

We know the routine by now, don’t we? The Toronto Maple Leafs come to town, and that means thousands of blue- and white-clad Leafs fans packing HSBC Arena, chants of “Let’s Go Buffalo!” and “Go Leafs Go!” competing for bragging rights, a super-energized crowd and two teams feeding off the frenzy, and some epic fights (although last week there seemed to be more of those in the stands than on the ice). This past Friday, Buffalo spanked Toronto 5-2 before a packed house, thanks in part to Tim Connolly’s two goals and some superb netminding by Marty Biron.

Hide and Seek

by Cynnie Gaasch

Filmmaker Naomi Uman of Mexico City, Mexico came to Buffalo last month to sew a buffalo-hide coat to keep her warm on her trip to the Ukraine this winter. An American living in Mexico, Uman attended Columbia University and teaches at Cal Arts, and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship. As a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Uman was invited by Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center to visit our fine city as a Hallwalls Artist in Residence. Between film projects, Uman came up with her buffalo hide coat project in order to make something symbolic of Buffalo that she could use in her travels. She is making a coat for her Chihuahua, Tuta, as well as herself, as she is traveling to the Ukraine with her in February when she will begin work on her next feature film.

The Magic Numbers and Feist

by Donny Kutzbach

It’s been a good year for fans of Connor Oberst, the singer/songwriter boy-man behind Omaha, NE’s feted indie outfit Bright Eyes. The band’s two 2005 albums, the country-kissed I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and the noisenik electrorock set Digital Ash/ Digital Urn, have been blockbuster releases in a tepid marketplace and elevated Oberst to top-tier status. His music is the stuff that makes that certain circle of sensitive teens and 20-somethings’ hearts heat up. From behind a trembling, blue tenor Oberst delivers songs earnest, fragile and nakedly confessional. He taps into that similar sad lost lad territory that made Morrissey an icon before him. People eat that stuff up! But some people hate that stuff, too.

Cages

Cages is musical freedom, a project based on no boundaries and no impossibilities with a mission to make as much music as possible. Cages is sometimes a collective of Nola and Dave Bailey or Nola and Brandon Locher. The Cage is your shelter.

by Chuck Shepherd

■ At 10pm on Oct. 19, Ralph Parker, 93, in his Chevrolet Malibu, eased up to a tollbooth on Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg, Fla., inattentive to the fact that there was a dead body lodged in his windshield (the result of a collision about three miles away). According to police, Parker was off by about 10 miles when asked where he was and by two months on the date, and he thought the body had just fallen from the sky. Parker’s son, 66, said he was aware his father had been deteriorating mentally, yet Parker’s driver’s license was renewed last year through age 99, based on Florida’s lax renewal policy (toughened for the state’s 54,000 age-80-and-up drivers only by a vision test). (By contrast, for example, Florida requires 16 hours’ training every two years for its licensed cosmetologists.)

by Rob Brezsny

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In 1837, Frederick Froebel started the first school for four- and five-year-olds in Germany. He called it “kindergarten,” or child’s garden, and made it into a paradisiacal sanctuary where teachers read kids poetry and stories, led them in singing songs, and oversaw them as they gardened and played outdoors. Government authorities later shut the place down, citing the “dangerous freedom” of the experiment. I expect you may soon run into comparable opposition as you practice your own personal brand of “dangerous freedom,” Scorpio. How should you respond? Do whatever it takes to keep your dream alive, even if it means you have to cool it for a while. Just as the concept of kindergarten eventually revived and thrived, so too must your innovation.