So it’s 7:30 on Halloween night. And I’m now inside my friend’s house. We’ve already run out of candy…and it’s not because we only bought 1 or 2 bags. We had 9 bags of candy…NINE BAGS!!!

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays…I used to love getting dressed up and going door-to-door with my friends…Things seem to be quite different from when I was a kid. Here’s how things seem to have changed:

-Parents coming up and collecting bags of candy along with their kids who are collecting bags of candy…with an expectation of receiving candy.
-Kids being dropped off in carloads…now I know that maybe some neighborhoods don’t give out candy, but are we really expected to provide treats for an extra 50 kids??? That doesn’t seem fair to me…
-Kids, OLDER kids, without costumes…when I asked a couple of them what their costumes were, I got a shrug along with “I’m a model”…which clearly, she wasn’t…What happened to the fun of picking out a costume at the store or having your mom make you a costume?
-Very few kids say thank you anymore…and that’s not really their fault…it’s their parent’s fault. If a child doesn’t say thank you when something is given to them for free, it’s very likely that it’s because their parents haven’t taught them proper manners…I was brought up to always say please and thank you, NO MATTER WHAT!!! Some kids (and some adults for that matter) seem to walk around with this “you owe me” kind of attitude and it really bothers me…

I’m not really angry with the kids because they’re only doing what they’ve been brought up to do…it’s the fact that the parents don’t seem to care…

Now, obviously, I don’t mean this about all kids…some of the kids were very polite and clearly a lot of time had gone into putting their costumes together…just my take…

I admit it…I am a sports junkie! I just got home from the Sabres’ game. They won 3-1 over the New York Rangers. It’s nice to have hockey back on the radar after the lockout last year! And the new rules make the game a lot more fast-paced than they used to be. You aren’t stopping for icing every few minutes. What’ll be interesting to see if how the game flows in a few months, once the players have settled into the season. There wasn’t much checking in tonight’s game, based on the elimination of the red line and the fact that the game is very end-to-end.

I was at the Bills’ game last week where they beat the Jets. Another great game to be at (minus the obnoxious fans, of course).

Give me football, hockey, baseball…I’m a happy girl!

My favorite part of tonight’s game came after the game was over. We were sitting behind the player’s bench where the Sabres walk back to the locker room. There were several kids sitting near us. They were all sticking their hands through the gates hoping to have the players hi-five them. One little boy was even luckier…he was awarded the puck by Rory Fitzpatrick and it had been signed by Ryan Miller! Even though sports get wrapped up in salaries, contracts and negotations, it was fantastic to see that some of the players haven’t lost sight of who matters the most - the fans!!!

Nationally known local artist Susan Ryan is offering a special take on her unique home portraits for the 2005 holiday season.

Any new home portraits commissioned during the months of October, November and December will include an original, ready to frame, reverse painting on glass of your home along with a set of 25 holiday cards and envelopes. Discount will be given to commissions ordered before November 15th.

Susan Ryan’s artistic interpretations also include mixed media & paper pulp “rock” creations of shelves, chairs, benches, and freestanding sculpture.

Susan’s work has sold in museums and gift shops throughout the United States–including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Museum of Art, Tops Malibu, Gumps-SF and the Folk Art Museum of NYC. She has also produced a large body of work on private commission, including works for Hollywood “notables” like Cher and Mrs. Freddie Fields.

Examples of Susan’s work can be seen online at www.susanryanart.com

Interested parties should contact Sarah Neundorfer, Representative for pricing and more information at: 716-805-9646.

Originally posted by the Why (Not!) Guy:

If Buffalo was a movie, what songs would be on the soundtrack?

I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor
There’ll Be Some Changes Made by Ann-Margret
All Shall Be Well by Virginia Astley
It’s Getting Better by Cass Elliott
They Don’t Know About Us by Kirsty MacColl
Funkytown by Lipps, Inc.
But You’re So Beautiful by Future Bible Heroes
Take a Chance on Me by Abba
You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to by Julie London
The Luckiest Guy on the Lower West Side by Magnetic Fields

Bonus Track Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot (ok, it has nothing to do with Buffalo but come on, it’s the best song ever)

So what are your choices?

posted by The Why (Not!) Guy @ 11:29 PM
3 Comments:

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At 6:39 AM, david s said…

How ’bout the entire “Best of Wierd Al Yankvitch”

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At 8:21 AM, KT said…

Wasted On The Way~ CSN

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At 12:11 AM, The Why (Not!) Guy said…

Oh, and just to save you the trouble of looking… there’s no such song as “The Mayor Is a Stinky Doo-doo Head.” Maybe there should be.

Hello, everyone, my name is Greg, and I have a problem.

No, it’s not drugs, or even alcohol, even though anyone who has seen me when I’m imbibing might have their bone of contention on that matter. No folx, I am what you call an alpha-holic.

That’s right, I said ALPHA-holic. An alpha-holic is one of those rare addicts who can’t seem to stop buying, collecting and reading books. In this cathode-ray soaked age of television, internet, and instant information, it’s an extremely rare form of addictive processes, to be sure. Nonetheless, those of us who suffer from its ravages suffer more than a mild form.

Let me explain first when I realized I had hit rock bottom. Like most addictive problems, I lived in denial of this situation for years. When people saw me lying on the couch with one book in my lap, a magazine at my feet, a pile of comic books on the floor, and another book open in front of my face, people would kind of mutter in astonishment, “Are you reading all of those at the same time?” I of course brushed their concerns off with an “Of course not. I don’t read them at EXACTLY the same time.”

The one coffee shop barrista where I tend to frequent these days to indulge in my vice was the first really to raise an eyebrow though. With money in hand to procure my necessary caffeinated rations, she kept noticing at least one book under my arm, and, probably being nice simply asked what I was reading. After a more than long-winded explanation that I was back to reading my half-finished copy of Charles Cross’s biography on Kurt Cobain, “Heavier Than Heaven”. She simply remarked in an “oh, that’s cool” fashion…until two days later when I was back again. With another couple of books under my arm. So she asked “What do you have today?” and succumbed to another long-winded explanation that today I was going to bang out a couple more chapters of Lauren Belfer’s “City of Light” before maybe switching off to Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” or David McCullough’s new work on the early days of the American Revolution, “1776″. I pointed this out, because, while I overall like Belfer’s plot, and enjoyed the historical backdrop of the novel (it’s set in 1901 Buffalo), I found her prose to be garish and cloying, “like a bad romance novel,” and had to further point out that I found Franzen’s syntax much more witty and satisfying, while still being complex and ornate, and McCullough was just a master at putting American history into its proper context. I think she made another “oh, that’s cool” remark, but with much less zeal this time, maybe because I couldn’t have come off as more of a printed word junkie at that point if I had inkspots on my eyeballs. She was suitably astonished enough to ask finally, “Did you finish the last book you were reading already?”

“Oh, no,” I said, waving the idea off. “That one is just back at home. I just read a lot of books at the same time.”

“About how many?” she had the bravery to ask.

“I dunno, maybe four or five dozen.”

Her mouth slackened some with incredulity.

A few days later, out of some random whim, I decided to have a look at exactly how many books I’m in the middle of reading right now. I also came to the decision that I would exclude any magazines, alternative newspapers, comic books or graphic novels I might be in the middle of. Too many of those are easily read in the span of twenty minutes to an hour and a half or a week. So it would be strictly books I would count. And so, I began to go across the living room floor, over to the end tables, over next to the couch, up to the one set of shelves behind the television, over to the book case, then into the kitchen table, and on into the bedroom, and its tables, bookshelves, and floor. And on through the house I went, counting along, keeping in mind to remember the three or four sitting in the passenger seat of my car from lunch break earlier that day.

And I came to a shocking realization. I should have come to that realization when I counted thirteen books in the bathroom alone–and I’m surprised one of my roommates didn’t voice some concern by now either in this lifetime. My total number of books currently being read: 134.

And I had four more on order from Amazon.

I suppose I should have seen the warning for years, when I thought nothing of spending over a third of a week’s salary at the bookstore, with a booty of bound paper object under my arm. The counter help would always ask “find everything?” My response in the old days would have been “Yes, thank you,” or a query about something I hadn’t been able to find that day. In later years, when the help asked “find everything?” I would say, “For today!”

Yes, I suppose that should have been a sign.

Part of the reason I think is the fact that I’m an information junkie, who actually finds entertainment in, shudder, LEARNING stuph. I don’t just want to learn the facts, I want to find the perspective behind the facts. It’s why I read both fiction and non-fiction with an avaricious peculiarity.

Another part of the reason was the fact that I have long felt the need to earn the nickname I was painted with in my musician days, when dubbed “The Professor.” No, I’m not a professor, never have been, actually. I got the name for a few reasons: it was a nod to one of my musical heroes, Neil Peart (also nicknamed by his band mates as The Professor), it hearkened back to my grandfather’s nickname of “Prof” (at least he was a school teacher), who was a personal hero. But most of all, it was because I was a know-it-all (especially for a musician), who had no problem going toe to toe in the musicians’ more common habits of entertaining themselves through recreational substances. But the whole time I would do it either with my nose in a book, or at least TALKING about a book I had my nose in last. Guitarists and drummers were talking shop, or about women (more often about women). I, the lowly singer and lyricist was immersed in a book. What a dunce.

The problem is, once someone marks you with the nom de guerre “Professor”, you kind of have to prove you have it for a reason. People start remarking “Ask Greg, he knows everything.” My choice was to either admit I didn’t know the answer to their question, or actually try to know everything. This may sound a bit arrogant, but so far in life, I bat about a .750 on at least knowing SOMETHING about what I’m asked. And at least 50 per cent of the rest of the time, I’ll say “Let me look that up for you and get back to you tomorrow.” And it wouldn’t be a lie.

And it’s like mob bosses will tell you. Once you earn a spot as the boss of anything, even that of being a pissy know-it-all, everyone else has to take a shot at knocking you off the top of the heap. Which means I had to learn even more.

One book at a time became four books at a time to keep pace with my need to know everything. And that became eight, and then twenty, and then three dozen, and then the snowball kept rolling.

It’s also a lot to do that I am a collector as it is. I also own in the neighbourhood of six or seven hundred CD’s (you lose accurate count after three hundred, and they’re all over the house and car), several dozen movies on tape and DVD (alright, it’s probably almost two hundred by now), and the stack of graphic literature I started collecting since I was twelve could probably fit into a small vault by now.

I don’t like throwing away stuph like that. Even books I’ve finally COMPLETED have to stick around in the shelves before getting put into storage. Just so I can show them off. At least a little while. Of course, when you’re buying books faster than you can move them OFF the shelf, that time as “show pieces” has diminished significantly.

So, it’s obvious, I’ve got a pretty nasty problem on my hands. How does one establish a social life in their thirties when they can’t get the smell of newsprint off their fingers, or the smell of leather binding out of their napsack? How do I hold a conversation without it eventually ending up an annoying, frenetic diatribe on something I’ve read, or you’ve read, but I haven’t yet but I’m going to soon (meaning “I need to go make a trip to the bookstore tomorrow”)?

It’s like they say, the first step to recovery is admitting that one has a problem. So I’m getting that out of the way. Until we all can figure out the next step, I’ll be over in the corner starting my newly purchased copy of Lenny Bruce’s “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.”

For any of you who might be interested:

What: Bob Wilmers, Chairman of M&T, will speak with the Jaycees as part of
our 90 Days of Leadership Program

When: Tuesday, October 18, 2005, 6 p.m.

Where: Troop I (Post 665) Hamlin House 432 Franklin Street

Who: All members, guests and prospects

What: Mr. Wilmers will speak with the Junior Chamber regarding the impact of
young professionals in Buffalo and our future. This will be a unique Q&A
forum given his many years of successfully guiding an outstanding local
company, community involvement, and independence.

For further information, contact David Ellerbrock at 998-6385 or
dje1@adelphia.net, or Jeremy Laubacker, President, at JLaubacker@aol.com

The arts are a huge and vital part of Buffalo and its economy…we all know that…to discuss this further, there will be a panel on October 27th, 5-10 PM, at Pearl Street Brewery.

Check out Queenseyes’ post for all the details…

So…this is a challenge to all you Bills’ fans out there! Thanks to our friend
Jennifer - she informed us about this poll being conducted by SI (Sports Illustrated for you non-sports fans)…

Bills’ made it through the voting…it’s down to them vs. Penn State for best tailgate…come on Bills’ fans, let’s hear you!!!
Click here to vote…

I’m pleased to let everyone know that the Grand Opening of the International Cooking Club was a huge success!

This past Sunday, over 4o people stopped by, sampled some food and signed up to be part of the ICC. The ICC’s grand opening took place during the Tour of Kitchens and while not on the exact same route, people managed to find their way over to see what was cooking…

Chari-Lynn had several different items to share with folks and was a trooper despite throwing her back out a few days before! Kudos to Chari-Lynn for putting together a successful event!

To find out more information about the ICC, send an e-mail to this address:
buffalointernationalcookingclub@yahoo.com

I’m also thrilled that the ICC is now one of Revitalize Buffalo’s projects/events…

Just in case you’re not registered for the big election…

To vote in the November 8th New York State General Election,
you must be registered to vote. The deadline to have your
voter registration form postmarked is October 14, 2005. The
link below will provide you with a New York State Voter
register here

If you are already registered to vote and wish to vote by
absentee ballot, download the absentee ballet application
from absentee ballot is here
Absentee ballot requests are due October 8, 2005.

To vote outside of New York State, click here
and find the button to get the correct form for your state.

If you have any questions about registering to vote, call 1-800-FOR-VOTE or 1-800-367-8683, TDD call 1-800-533-8683 or call the Erie County Board of Elections at (716) 858-8891.

This message is in compliance with the New York State Election Law and the National Voter Registration Act.