No Deposit No Return

by Buck Quigley

Did you know that three billion non-carbonated beverage containers are sold in New York State annually? Let’s conservatively estimate that each container is six inches tall. If you could balance all these water, juice, tea, coffee and sport drink containers end to end, you could stack them to the moon and still have nearly enough left over to wrap around the equator twice. Again, that’s only counting New York State, and over the course of only one year. Currently, less than one quarter of these are recycled. The rest make their way through the waste stream as litter, content for landfills or fuel for incinerators.

by Rob Brezsny

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The cosmic powers-that-be are encouraging you to be a brazen instigator of novelty, a pioneering magician who dares to initiate inspired trends that may upset the status quo. If you can summon the charismatic nerve to cooperate with this prod, Aquarius, there’s no telling what drastic acts of benevolent disruption you could conjure up. And they would ultimately lead, I have little doubt, to constructive innovations. (P.S. Would you believe me if I told you that a previously dormant section of your genetic code is primed to spring into action?)

by Chuck Shepherd

At the December ceremony in Najaf, Iraq, in which US commanders turned over control of the city, Iraqi commandos took the stage carrying frogs and a rabbit and soon were eating the animals raw in a show of feral manliness. As US personnel looked on apprehensively, one Iraqi cut open the rabbit’s belly, screamed, snatched its heart in his teeth and passed the bloody carcass down the line, with each commando taking a bite. According to a Baltimore Sun dispatch, locals said that Saddam Hussein’s special forces used to do similar things, but with snakes, dogs, cats and even wolves.

We write in response to two letters published January 11 about the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s sale of antiquities. Those letters contain factual errors and serious misrepresentations of the Gallery in general and this sale in particular.

Robert Franke

In December 2005, Robert Franke left his position as president of Forever Elmwood and moved west—about six blocks, to Grant Street, where in March 2006 he founded the Grant-Ferry Association. Franke is determined to apply the same self-starting tactics that helped to seed and sustain Elmwood’s resurgence to the Grant Street commercial district: sprucing up the street’s appearance, building a sense of community and commitment among business owners and, perhaps most importantly, inventorying and marketing available retail space. The goal, Franke says, is to reduce Grant’s current vacancy rate of 30 percent to five percent—and, in the process, to be one anchor in a resurgence of the entire Upper West Side, a rebirth that will make the most of the neighborhood’s burgeoning immigrant population, its relatively cheap rents, its proximity to Buffalo State College students and existing attractions such as Guercio’s & Sons.

Bohemian Rhapsody: Bistro Europa

by Marla Crouse

The night we went to Bistro Europa a soft snow was beginning to fall. We spotted the small restaurant’s facade, complete with faux awning and curtained window, and immediately sensed we were in for a treat. Coming into this cozy, inviting space was just the right thing to do to warm up and enjoy the evening’s romance.

Four Plays

by Anthony Chase

Theatre of Youth has long specialized in plays for children that do not condescend to them. Their current production of Bridge to Terabithia is a sophisticated entertainment that emphasizes their theme of plays based on books.

The Gift of Dance

by Jennifer Golonka

American Ballet Theatre Studio Company will be in residence at the University at Buffalo for one week this coming month, sharing their knowledge of dance with UB’s dance department. They will work collaboratively with filmmaker and director of UB’s Center for the Moving Image Elliot Caplan, who will document the creative process of choreographer Brian Reeder’s new piece, Ghost Light. This process is an important aspect of the creative arts which audiences rarely see. The piece has been commissioned by the Center for the Moving Image. In a brief interview, Caplan said that by bringing companies such as the ABT Studio Company to UB, he’s helping to “enliven the field here in Buffalo.”

Remembering Brainard

by Michael Kelleher

On Friday, January 26 at 8pm, poets Ron Padgett and Kenward Elmslie will be reading at the Albright-Knox to help celebrate the opening of Joe Brainard, People of the World: Relax! at the UB Art Gallery. Both prominent members of the New York School of poets, which included luminaries such as John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara and Ted Berrigan, Elmslie and Padgett were close friends and sometime collaborators of the late painter and writer Joe Brainard, whose work will be on display at the UB Art Gallery through March 3. I recently had a chance to interview Ron Padgett via email.

Mad About the Boy: Notes on a Scandal

by George Sax

It’s certainly not every movie that asks you to sympathize with a teacher who has an affair with an underage student. Notes on a Scandal gives us a woman who sleeps with a 15-year-old boy and portrays her as a victim. It’s a reflection of the filmmakers’ cleverness and the two powerhouse leading performances that we’re even temporarily inclined to give Sheba Hart, the offending pedagogue, any benefit of the doubt.

by M. Faust