Buzz Blog

Buffalo being the birthplace of air conditioning, let us toast this hot afternoon by conferring an award that shall surely turn out to be the first in a long and distinguished series.

It is an award for prominent and strategically placed window air conditioner!

With pride we present our first awardee.

This is, of course, St. Mary's School For the Deaf.

It is possible we are starting at the top. St. Mary's sets the bar very high. The building is stately, beautiful and architecturally significant. It boasts several prominent window air conditioners but the one that really nets the school the award is the one perfectly, gloriously located, right over the cross placed over the grand front entrance.

Congratulations, St. Mary's School For The Deaf!

Very, very cool!

Buzz keeps laughing at the speech Macklemore, the Seattle hip hopper, gave at the Billboards awards the other night, about his number "Thrift Shop."

"First and foremost, I want to thank Goodwill..."

We hunted down a video that shows you the speech without the song. The song has too much, shall we say, rugged language for Buzz or for the Buzz Blog. Anyway, got to love how after thanking Goodwill, Macklemore gives a shoutout to a place called Value Village. That must be a local Seattle outfit. Speaking of which, love that coat!

"Thrift Shop" is a great show biz idea that Buffalo should have thought of first.

Where are our rappers and hip hoppers?

Buffalo, the Other Red Meat!

Such is the siren song of Wild Idea Buffalo, which sells grass-fed buffalo meat. The company woos customers with pictures of bison meat smoldering on coals, dripping with juices. The price of beef is rising, Wild Idea Buffalo crows, and so hearty and heart-healthy buffalo is a bargain.

Their May Special is $17.95 a pound. And that's on sale! Kind of hefty if you ask us, and not enough to tempt us away from Scime's Sausage just yet.

Still, what a pleasure to see the words "Buffalo" and "healthy" in the same sentence!

Must be why they call themselves "Wild Idea."

You know those signs you see stuck into the ground on street corners, hawking a mattress or bedroom set for sale?

Now there's one pitching a Tralf concert!

Buzz snapped this picture while waiting for the light to change. In case you do not have time to blow it up and study it, the sign reads:

"MICHAEL JACKSON CONCERT TRIBUTE, MAY 24, TRALF, 7 P.M."

We've spotted this sign stuck into the ground at other intersections too. Which, we have no problem with that. Good for the Tralf. Why should this form of direct marketing, which predates the Egyptians, be reserved for the sellers of mattresses and bedroom sets and people offering you cash for your house?

We should all go grassroots!

Western New York's high school proms get better and better! Seen last night at the Statler, a kilt.

An actual kilt! Such as Prince Charles or Buzz's favorite royal, Prince Philip, might wear.

The young man confident enough to sport this fashion with aplomb: James Nash, of Attica High School, whose prom was being held at the Statler, along with Cardinal O'Haras. Mr. Nash says his background is Scottish and we believe him. His date is Kara Manzanares of Orchard Park. 

Fashion kudos to them both.

Also... love the sneakers.

At the Statler on Friday, Buzz stood agog beholding Depew High School's prom. The kids were gathering in the Terrace Room. 

The boys, as usual, were fun to observe. There is always one with a Mohawk haircut, you know? And a friend remarked: "You can always tell the guys who haven't worn a suit since their First Communion."

But the girls!

These girls were better coiffed than Buzz was at our own wedding!

We could not get over how beautiful they looked, how gorgeously turned out they were. Above, left to right: Jennifer Groblewski, Chloe Beach, Angela Fronckowiak.

One friend in Oregon comments on Facebook: "I can hear the dresses."

You can take the Buffalonians out of Buffalo but you can't make us not be cheapskates!

Buzz, looking back on our three days in New York City to hear the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, finds ourself glorying in ways in which we cut corners and saved pennies.

For one thing we found a guy on the street selling pashmina scarves and we scarfed one up, haha, for five bucks.

For another thing we located an Irish pub practically around the corner from our hotel where they had what very well could have been the Big Apple's only $5 glass of wine. To quote Rick Jeanneret: "Scooooooore!" Of course we ran into other Buffalonians there.

And one more fine example of Buffalo penny pinching:

When you fly Jet Blue -- and of course we were all flying Jet Blue, 'cause it's cheap -- you have to make your way from JFK Airport into Manhattan. You have your choice: Cab, for something like $60, or a long ride on the E Train, pictured above in Buzz's unglamorous photograph, which will run you $8.50.

Take the E Train! It is a Buffalonian no-brainer. Buzz grit our teeth and rode the gritty subway. So did everyone else we talked to.

One fellow rider was WNED-FM announcer Peter Hall, who was emceeing the after-concert party at the Russian Tea Room. As the E Train shook, rattled and rolled its way into Manhattan, Hall beheld John Hurley, the president of Canisius College, and his wife.

Hall said to President Hurley: "We non-profits know how to save money."

As do we all!

It must be Buffalo osmosis but last night around midnight, foraging for yet another bite in the Big Apple, Buzz went to a nearby Irish pub and ran into a bunch of Buffalo Philharmonic types. It was late and we were all having too much fun and admittedly Buzz does not retain every erudite musical matter we discussed. However...

We do remember celebrity sightings!

One was LeVar Burton, spotted by the trombone section.

Martin Scorcese, seen by BPO staff and patrons in a restaurant on Columbus Circle.

(The people involved on this one are split on this, whether it actually was Scorcese or not. Buzz says it definitely was.)

And finally, Dan Hart, the BPO's executive director, said someone saw Steve Martin. 

Hmmmm.

What if LeVar, Steve and Martin are talking to their friends right now and saying, "I thought I spotted musicians from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.. but I'm not sure..."

After last night's triumphant performance, you never know!

Details will be in the paper tomorrow, but the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra's performance at Carnegie Hall was magnificent. In Buffalo lingo we rocked the house! Buzz took the photo above as the orchestra was filing in. The excitement was tremendous.

At the end of Gliere's challenging Symphony No. 3, as everyone was standing and cheering, the woman in the seat behind Buzz tapped us on the shoulder. 

"Excuse me," she said. "Do you know why was there so much clapping between movements of the symphony?"

Buzz, in our long red gown and green Spring For Music scarf, must have looked to her like the kind of person who could answer this question.

Our friend Lizzie, who was with us, says we should have answered by asking her, "Why were you talking through the whole thing?" Because this woman's friend was talking all night. 

But Buzz was polite. We looked around at the sea of people, all applauding. We turned back to the woman.

"Because," we said, "there are a lot of people from Buffalo here, and a lot of them are new to classical music, and they're here to support the orchestra, and they don't know not to clap between movements, and they were carried away with the excitement of the music, so they clapped." We explained that we were from Buffalo.

She frowned. We leaned closer to her.

"Are you a New Yorker?" we asked gently. 

She said she was.

"Did you come for the Gliere?" we asked. 

She nodded.

"Did you like it?" we asked.

She nodded again. "Yes," she said.

And then she kind of smiled. We had achieved rapport.

"Thank you for coming," Buzz said. We smiled at each other.

Concert a success.

Buzz spent the afternoon where everyone in the world wanted to be, but few get to go, which was the rehearsal of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra this afternoon on stage at Carnegie Hall, pictured above in a picture we snapped when nobody was looking. 

How about that grammar? Sorry, we forgot to pack our writing skills! They are still sitting at home on our dining room table.

Anyway.

Accompanying us on our adventure was New York photographer Keith Bedford, who has been contracted to take pictures for The News. One thing Keith and Buzz did while testing the limits of our Carnegie Hall All Access Pass was to ascend to the Maestro's Suite. This is where great conductors hang out backstage while they await show time.

The Maestro's Suite has a cubbyhole where you look down to the stage and we took pictures from there. Here is our picture of Keith photographing through the cubbyhole which illustrates why he is taking the official pictures and we are not.

While Keith was shooting away he told us the greatest story. On the way to his assignment he had stopped at Starbucks. And while he was there, someone asked him the question everyone dreams of being asked:

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

Buzz caught our breath.

"Did you tell them, Keith?" we asked.

"I did!" he exalted. "I said, 'Practice!'"

He laughed.

"I've lived in New York City since 1999," he said. "This is the first time I've ever been able to tell that joke."

It must have been a Buffalonian who asked him!