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Queen City

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

■ Salt Lake City fashion designer Jared Gold recently began offering jeweled brooches featuring brightly colored Swarovski crystals affixed to a live, three-inch-long Madagascar hissing cockroach that a woman can allow to roam a short distance around her dress or jacket via a silver chain affixed to the roach’s back. The brooch sells for $80 at Gold’s Web site. An April New York Post story quoted an animal-rights spokesman as calling the bauble “just the gift” for the “person who doesn’t mind a small animal excreting on them throughout the day.”

Streetvoice

Best of Buffalo: A Few of My Favorite Things

by Caroline Phelan

After more than 1,400 of you sent us your ballots and voted for your favorite bars, restaurants and other hotspots around Buffalo, we wanted to know how the home team measures up to other cities between the East and West Coast. We asked non-Buffalo natives how the Queen City rules in comparison to the bigger and brighter lights of New York, Philly or San Francisco. More importantly, we asked what were some of the things about Buffalo that made them want to stay.

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): New Rule: During the next two weeks, you’re not allowed to think any thought or feel any feeling you’ve experienced a million times before. If you detect one of those stale ingredients bubbling up into the mix, it’s your sacred duty to immediately substitute a fresh-from-the-garden idea or feeling that you’ve never entertained before. It’s the season of novelty, Taurus—time to compost the old ways and revel in raw innocence. Invite the universe to gorge you with virginal blessings.

Letters to Artvoice

On Thursday April 27, I was invited to an after-tax party. Instead, I went to the Monsignor Malikowski Center in Cheektowaga to hear a New York State Department of Health (DOH) report of a cancer health study done in Bellevue. I think I made the wrong choice.

Getting a Grip

The Manchurian Presidency

by Michael I. Niman

What if we had a real bona fide chimpanzee for a president? You know, a little hairy ape like the ones in the zoo. Would he or she do a better job than George W. Bush?

Book Reviews

Pleasure: Poems by Gary Young

by Peter Connors

The title of Gary Young’s new prose poetry collection begs for one of those trite meaningless blurb summations like, “Pleasure is a pleasure!” But the truth is, there is as much death and sorrow in this book as there is light and bliss. And that is what makes Young’s poetry sagely and affirming in a substantial way, in a way that acknowledges, with a peaceful sigh, that life is sweet because it is over too soon. Young’s sincerity and apparent lack of attachment to the surrealist impulses that dominate prose poetry give him a unique voice in that milieu. His prose poetry lineage would be Bly by way of Ponge, but I think that sells Young short. His work is closer to that of the Deep Image poetics of Anthony Piccione and Li-Young Lee than any of his prose poetry predecessors. Young writes sublimely of earthly delights: eating raw fish, exhaling cigar smoke among the trees, making love while half-asleep. His poetry is a Zen-like paean to being, “in the moment.” He will help you get there.

Poetry

the last time i cried

by John A. Grochalski

Something Like

by Perry Nicholas

She Sings Standards in the Corner

by Mark Lloyd

Good Eats

Teas for Tru!

by Bridget Kelly

At 810 Elmwood Avenue there is a strange building with a staircase in front. The building is the Neighborhood Collective, and there’s an art gallery out back, a graphics gallery upstairs, a jewelry gallery in the front window and…a tea shop. One beautiful afternoon my guest and I fed the meter on Elmwood and climbed those stairs, on a quest for a decent cuppa.

Artshorts

Going Once, Going Twice!

by Cynnie Gaasch

The collection of works up for auction at CEPA Gallery’s Eighth Biennial Photography Art Auction on Saturday, May 13, 2006 are all about the light-catching medium. The galleries are filled with representations of reflected, filtered, illuminating, silhouetting and captured light—the stuff of photographs, what photographers die for. This year’s collection of 88 works is an inspiring mix of fine craft and artistry, and hopefully this mix will turn into some nice profits for the only gallery devoted to photography in Western New York.

Theater

The Blossom Cohan Party

by Anthony Chase

This week, Monday, May 8, from 5 to 10pm, it’s the Blossom Cohan party at Studio Arena Theatre. The legendary Studio Arena publicist/special events planner/archivist/historian/actress and all-round great gal died in March, and in her will she provided for one last party! All friends and fans of “The Bloss” are invited, as are members of the theater community. Blossom’s son, Dean Cohan, will be there, as will her daughter-in-law Leslie, her former intern Tom Fontana and the new Studio Arena artistic director Kathleen Gaffney. Expect press people, audience members, printers, travel agents, bartenders, musicians, advertising executives, designers, technicians, bankers, actors—in short, the Brechtian parade of Buffalo humanity whose lives have been touched by the legendary Blossom Cohan. It’s a celebration of Blossom’s life, her example for living it to the fullest and her eternally positive attitude.

Theaterweek

by Anthony Chase

As is often the case, some of the best theater of the season is packed into the final weeks of the season. With a first-rate Urinetown at MusicalFare, and two impressive Doug Wright plays: I Am My Own Wife at Buffalo United Artists and Quills at Torn Space. Alleyway puts its best foot forward with The Book of Liz. Also noteworthy is the Kavinoky production of Celadine (not yet reviewed by Artvoice) and a game if uneven production of Loot from the Irish Classical Theatre Company.

Stagefright

by Javier

After being away from Broadway for 20 years, the fabulous Jill Clayburgh (pictured above) returned this season to appear in two plays, Richard Greenberg’s A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, which played last fall, and the current revival of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, which is scheduled to close on May 21. The show will have played 108 performances. The original 1963 production ran for 1,530 performances. Clayburgh, who turned 62 last Sunday, April 30, was last seen on Broadway in the revival of Noel Coward’s Design for Living, which opened in 1984 co-starring Frank Langella and the late Raul Julia.

Puck Stop

Replaygate

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

It has become quite the controversy…well, maybe more so down in Philadelphia than here in Buffalo. It all happened in the overtime of game one, when Brian Campbell leveled Umberger with a clean, open-ice hit. Umberger lay there motionless for what seemed like forever before finally being helped off of the ice. And then the infamous replay—on the Jumbotron—prompting gasps and wild applause from the Buffalo faithful.

Gewgaws and Gimcracks

G150 Straight Razor

by David P. Kleinschmidt

Gillette Mach3 is for pansies. Norelco’s patented “Lift and Cut” system is for even bigger pansies. Bic’s double-blade disposable razors with the grody mucous strip are for cheap pansies. Any razor that shoots “soothing gel” out of the handle—you got it, man. Pansies. Real men—by which I mean the kind of guys who get bored and go base jumping—use straight razors.

Film Reviews

Life With Father: L'Enfant

by George Sax

Nitrate Traces: American Gun

by M. Faust

See You There

Artvoice Best of Buffalo Party

by Buck Quigley

Folkloric Dance Co.

by Caroline Phelan

The Art of Jazz with Judy Carmichael

by Miakka Natisse Wood

One Self: DJ Vadim, Yarah Bravo, Blue Rum 13

by Greg Gannon

Left of the Dial

Pearl Jam

by Donny Kutzbach

Sam Roberts: Chemical City

by Anthony Chabala