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Cover Story

How Stupid Is Your Daily Paper?

by Jamie Moses

A well-known Buffalo businessman friend has repeatedly claimed the biggest reason for Buffalo’s decline is the Buffalo News. That seems quite unlikely, but then again, maybe he’s right. It’s certainly true the newspaper has regularly sucked over $50 million a year in profits out of our economy and sent it off to Omaha to fatten Warren Buffett’s wallet. It’s a remarkable testament to our own foolishness that the News has been able to continually realize such obscene profits. Consider, that when Artvoice started in 1990 the Buffalo News daily circulation was 315,732 and today it’s fallen to only 194,225—but their profits have increased. How could they produce so much less and yet still earn so much money? Simple, if you print half as many papers, charge twice as much. They doubled the price of the paper and raised advertising rates 88 percent over this period.

Book Reviews

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

by Andy Stott

O Spam Poams

by Kevin Thurston

Getting a Grip

Why Tookie Had to Die

by Michael I. Niman

Stanley Tookie Williams was the convicted murderer and founder of the notorious Crips street gang. During his 26 years in prison, he transformed himself into a five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, a prolific author of children’s books, and an anti-gang-violence activist. The State of California executed him last week for a series of homicides he was convicted of committing in 1979. In signing off on the killing of Williams, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger violently silenced one of the world’s most outspoken supporters of nonviolence—all in the name of combating violence.

Artist of the Week

Robert Pomerhn

by Lauren N. Maynard

Why you should know who his is: Poet Robert Pomerhn has been writing and performing poetry in coffeehouses around Buffalo for 15 years. A Buffalo State grad, he says his goal is to show the world how to accept poetic forms beyond the more traditional literary canon, and to accept artists who work and struggle for acceptance outside academia or the “Def Jam scene.” His vivid, religiously infused poetry has run the gamut from street-smart rhymes to emotional free verse on current events, and was first self-published in 2003’s Blest for This Poet Crest to Rest on My Chest as well as in underground publications across the country. His latest collection is Till Death Do Us published in December by Joe Veronneau of Vermont’s Scintillating Press (freewebs.com/scintillatingpublications/). A practicing Catholic, Pomerhn sometimes also uses other media, like collage and music lyrics, to express his devotion and commitment expressing his life and times. His books are available around town at Rust Belt Books, Talking Leaves and other local booksellers.

You Auto Know

One Giant Step Forward

by Jim Corbran

You’ve got to give the folks at Hyundai credit. Every new vehicle they’ve introduced in the past four or five years has, excuse the mixed metaphor, been hit over the fence. Right out of the ballpark.

Puck Stop

Sorting Out the Goaltender Situation

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

It’s all that everyone is talking about. Three goaltenders, all with NHL credentials and all capable of starting in this league, each has contributed mightily towards the Sabres’ success this year, and in a pinch, any of these guys could be called upon to lead this team. Yet step into the Sabres dressing room, and there are but two of those oversized goaltenders cubicles, a reminder that when it comes to hockey teams, three can be a crowd.

Artshorts

Borders Crossed: Tomie Arai at CEPA Gallery

by Cynnie Gaasch

Birch plywood cut and formed into tables and chairs become the canvas for Tomie Arai’s “Double Happiness,” an installation that fills CEPA Gallery’s first floor gallery in the Market Arcade as part of the current exhibit “Tomie Arai: Untelling.” A Chinese wedding banquet is attended by a group which is entirely bi-racial, all part Chinese and part Latin American or Caribbean: Guatemalan, Jamaican, Caribbean, and Haitian. A bit of each “guest’s” oral history is documented on the back of each seat, and a black and white silk screen print of their face is on the front. The tools of printmaking bring to life a three-dimensional feast for the eyes and mind with walls painted red and Latin dancing music piped in over the speaker system.

Film Reviews

Unhappy Trails: Brokeback Mountain

by George Sax

My Life as a Puppy: Casanova

by M. Faust

Left of the Dial

The Strokes: First Impressions of Earth

by Jason Gusmann

In the interest of full disclosure, I am 35 years old and way past the point where a current rock band should mean anything to me anymore. Additionally, the only new albums I bought with my own money last year were the LCD Soundsystem disc, Beck’s Guero, and the Wilco live record. (However, I did buy the No New York re-issue, which immediately made me feel cooler and smarter than any other new disc that I could have purchased would have made me feel). This is all just preamble to the point that I need to make now. Despite all that I have just said, The Strokes mean something to me.

Bandwidth

Breakerbox

You might like our music if you like....

Robert Palmer, Mötley Crüe, Billy Idol, AC/DC, The Eurythmics, Ashlee Simpson (if my foot was up her ass).

See You There

Syd Barrett Birthday Tribute

by Mark Norris

Nickel City Poetry Slam

by Lauren N. Maynard

Red Spirit

by K. O'Day

Snowshoeing in Delaware Park

by Peter Koch

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

■ A documentary, The Indigo Revolution, debuts in January, with World Indigo Weekend scheduled for Jan. 27 to Jan. 29, touting “special,” high-energy kids regarded by their doting parents as psychic and endowed with an identifying, indigo-colored aura. Indigos are said to act imperially and to be astutely rebellious towards authority (though cynics say they’re just routinely self-centered brats, the product of excessive parental coddling). One Indigo parent told the Orange County (Calif.) Register in November that the numerous instances of her own child’s prescience led her to offer her services as a facilitator to other Indigo parents (at up to $400 for workshops). Indigos “have a temper,” she acknowledged, but not an ordinary temper. “(It) seems geared toward philosophical and existential issues.”

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Stage magician David Copperfield made an intriguing announcement recently. He told the German magazine Galore that in his next show, he will use magic to make a woman pregnant—without touching her. That’s similar to the kind of mojo you will possess in 2006, Capricorn. It’s true that your success in the past has usually come from your pragmatic intelligence, organizational ability, and thoroughness. But in the coming months you will also have a talent for conjuring beautiful illusions that ultimately become very real.