[HIP HOP] There’s a reason why GZA is sometimes called The Genius. Born as Gary Grice, the 50-year-old Brooklyn native and founding Wu-Tang member is known to possess “the second largest vocabulary in rap music.” We don’t know who’s numero uno in that distinction, and it doesn’t matter right now since it’s GZA that’s coming to lay down his philosophical prowess at The Waiting Room on Saturday, February 25.
[DISCUSSION] Want to learn more about the internet’s most mysterious and mischievous factions, Anonymous? Well writer Douglas Lucas is a journalist who has dedicated himself to covering the workings of the secretive hacktavist group for several years and he comes to Buffalo’s Burning Books to do a presentation on the subject on Thursday, February 23. Lucas has reported on the group’s activities for websites like Vice, Salon, Daily Dot, Nerve, and more.
[POP PUNK] You might not realize it based on their boyish appearances, but West Virginia-based pop-punk band Time and Distance having been touring consistently for a decade. The band’s latest single, “Something More” picks up where the Drive Thru Records catalogue seems to leave off—the video includes shots of skateboarding mishaps, backward caps, and acoustic guitars as the band pretty much embody the genre.
Tea Party figurehead and Paladino chauffeur John a.k.a. “Rus” Thompson pled guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor count of “offering a false instrument for filing in the second degree”. District Attorney John Flynn offered to withdraw the felony charges, and Thompson’s plea will enable him to avoid the possible 1 year jail sentence for three years of probation.
The intragovernmental tug-of-war over Presidential power is as old as the republic; there’s nothing new under the sun. In recent days, however, President Trump’s band of malignant sycophants and apologists have declared that the President wields some sort of supreme power over matters relating to immigration and whatever he deems, “national security” — power so all-consuming and superior that not even the courts have the right to review it.
At the Toronto International Film Festival last September, one of the films I most missed seeing was Toni Erdmann, from Germany. It seemed that everyone I knew who was there saw it and loved it. Anticipation continued to grow for it over the months, as it started amassing critics awards and almost unanimous praise. The review aggregator MetaCritic gives it a 94/100, with a substantial number of reviews ranking it 100 percent. It is a nominee for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
NICK BUTLER is a Buffalo-based photographer and the subject of a David Moog portrait. See more of his work here.
STACEY ROBINSON is an artist who studied at UB and now teaches at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Assemblyman Sean Ryan has taken the unusual step, for an elected official, of hiring an architect and presenting a preservation-focused plan for 100-year-old Elmwood Avenue buildings that two big-portfolio developers want to crush, dismember, and erase.
Comparing the Ryan plan for these buildings with the developers’ plans is not just about a different sensibility, but something more basic: Ryan’s plan raises questions about the economic presumptions of the big-portfolio developers.
Talking to the three piece garage rock band Ugly Sun on a cold afternoon at a coffee shop in Buffalo, the conversation turns to their choice of hats.
Guitarist Trey Hollowood is wearing something like a Russian Ushanka hat. Bassist/vocalist John Crook is wearing a beenie with the logo of his family’s bar in East Aurora, the Bar Bill Tavern, and his brother Harry, the drummer of the band, is wearing a retro Buffalo Bills hat—the standing red Buffalo on a white background. Harry is given the award for best hat of the day by me, and Hollowood is visibly disappointed.