[COMEDY] Comedian Demetri Martin is the king of the unexpected punchline. Sometimes all he really gives his audience is the punchline. “Pets are animals that are not delicious,” he blurts out during his Netflix stand up special Demetri Martin: Live (At the Time). “I have an L shaped sofa. Lowercase,” he says, before going on to a seven second bit on soap scum. The comedian, who has appeared on the Daily Show isn’t all just rapid one liners, though.
[ART] I’m old. And when I say old, I don’t mean what you easy, shit-heeled hipsters say about old. This is not 40. This is pushing 50. I am also vain. So when I hear that Sugar City is hosting a show called Folks I Know of portraits gleaned from “the eyes of seven active Instagrammers in Buffalo,” and I know every one of those instant-grabbers, there better be a picture of me. Or, there better not be. Either way, you lose. And either way, I’m going on Friday, October 6, to find out.
[PUNK] Shape Shift With Me is obviously a great title for an Against Me! album. The punkband, formed in Gainesville, Florida in 1997 and lead by singer Laura Jane Grace has shifted shape in many ways. First off, Grace came out as transgender in 2012 and her transition has been a theme of the band’s records since 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues. But the band has also shifted shape in other ways—once a folk-punk band, the band has morphed into a glam punk band of sorts with hints of post-punk, new wave, and pop punk.
[ART OPENING] Ani Hoover is, unequivocally, on of the region’s coolest and most thoughtful makers of art. Her work is in the collections of the Albright-Knox and the Burchfield Penney. She has exhibited quite nearly everywhere there is a place to exhibit art in this community. The newest notch in her belt is one of the newer art spaces we have: The Cass Project, curator/artist/etc. Tina Dillman’s endeavor, programs the lobby at the multi-use 500 Seneca building, a Savarino development.
[PEOPLE’S PARTY] One is forgiven if, at this moment, democracy does not appear to be particularly beautiful. But we have more reason to celebrate progress than we have to lament the current retrograde movement. If you need evidence, get down to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on Thursday, October 5, when the Partnership for the Public Good—a bastion in the progressive movement in this community—celebrates its 10-year anniversary with a party called Beauty and Democracy.
[FUNDRAISER] Here are the top three things about Dining Out for Life, in your humble correspondent’s estimation: 1) You get to—no, you are compelled to—go out to dinner at a place you have wanted to try (or to refresh the pleasures of an old familiar favorite), whether it’s a place you can or can’t really afford, knowing a significant portion of your check will be remitted to Evergreen Health, a nonprofit which provides a veritable rainbow of services to those affected by HIV/AIDS; 2) in doing so, you may be responding to the invit
President Donald Trump is worsening the NFL kneeling controversy for only one reason: he has to drive a wedge through Americans in order to distract from the extraordinary corruption, and catastrophic failure of his administration.
It’s now less than one week to the beginning of the eleventh edition of the Buffalo International Film Festival, featuring four days of screenings at four locations: the North Park theater is home base, along with Hallwalls, Squeaky Wheel, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. If you haven’t already purchased a Bison Pass, by all means get one ASAP: $39.99 gets you into all the movies you can handle.
See the kid in that image holding that sign? Obviously, that’s someone’s kid.
Before I continue, please note that I have express permission from the person who took the image to use it, and from the kid’s parents to publish it, provided I pixellate the child’s face.
The kid’s mom attended a protest relating to a fundraiser at a downtown restaurant that has been the subject of some recent controversy.
The retrospective sample of the life’s work of Victor Shanchuk, Jr., now on show at Artists Group Gallery, is a rainbow of colors and wide array of genres, media, styles, techniques. Painting, drawing, photography, collage, figuration, abstraction, and much overlap.