Buzz Blog

Kevin Gaughan, proponent of government downsizing, was seen at Home Depot buying a toilet seat.

With luck he should be able to get bloated bureaucracy to sit down and work on eliminating waste!

So Buzz is sitting here, listening to "Life Without Christmas" by Giya Kancheli, this piece the Buffalo Philharmonic is playing at Carnegie Hall next week. It is this kind of haunting piece of music that Kancheli, who was born in 1935, recalls the cold and oppressive atmosphere of the Soviet Union, when religion was outlawed.

There is weird scoring. The piece includes an electric bass, and strings, and piano, and the taped voice of a boy soprano, and, most impressively, the rumble of Stalin's tanks and machinery.

That rumble sounds most realistic, Buzz thought, listening admiringly.

Then .... oh wait.

It was the construction equipment outside our window! They had a big weight and were boring a pole into the ground.

Wow, this sort of makes the piece complete! Can we record this rumble and add it to our performance at Carnegie Hall? Or, better still, bring along the actual equipment?

After all, as JoAnn Falletta said in Saturday's News: "We aren't taking just the Buffalo Philharmonic to Carnegie Hall ... we're taking Buffalo!"

Unforgettable, this notice for Lance Diamond at Milkie's, the old Elmwood Lounge. Let us cut and paste:

CAN YOU SHAKE IT, SHAKE IT, SHAKE IT!!!!! THEN COME OUT TO MILKYS ON ELMWOOD THIS SATURDAY NIGHT APRIL 27th FOR A PARTY WITH LANCE DIAMOND AND HIS 24K DIAMOND BAND. 522 ELMWOOD AVE, BUFFALO NY . AND REMEMBER LANCE GOES TILL 9 IN THE MORNING. 11pm SHOW TIME, $5.00 at the DOOR....

God love you, Lance, for sticking to that 11 p.m. start time after all these years! One gal we know who used to live in an apartment next door said you could set your clock by what time he went on, and what time he sang "Brick House."

And remember, Lance goes till 9 in the morning!

It is official: As of late last night, the resignation of Channel 2 sports czar Ed Kilgore was proven to have eclipsed the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

Buzz loves both public figures and so we do not begrudge Kilgore this distinction. We confess, every day we are enjoying the endless shots of Kilgore surrounded by blindingly attractive people wishing him well.

We wish you well, too, Ed!

Only one thing is missing...

Continue reading "Ed Kilgore's Resignation Officially Eclipses Pope's" »

So obvious, but so funny, the picture going around Facebook. It appears to have started with the Western New York page.

No fair, our Pope Alarm was late in letting us know about the white smoke!

By the time we got our promised text it had been a full three minutes since a co-worker had alerted us.

"I've been watching the live video feed," she said. "And I'm not even Catholic!"

It is fun, all the jokes going around Facebook. They're not mean. They're just funny.

WBFO's Bert Gambini posted this picture: "The Cardinals Celebrate" ...

Why sit back passively as the Pope is elected? Why let them blow smoke, pictured above, at you? Get involved!

Two sites that will help you do that:

1. Adopt-A-Cardinal. You go to this site and they assign you, at random, a cardinal to pray for. Buzz got a cardinal from the Netherlands with the greatest name. It is Willem Jacobus Eijk! Or Willem Jacobus Cardinal Eijk. We do not want our prayers to be tripped up by a technicality.

2. Pope Alarm! This site promises to notify you by email and/or text message the second the smoke turns white! As it says: "You may be asleep. You may be busy doing something else ... and miss the 'Habemus Papam'! (Latin for "We have a pope.")

Darn it all, Buzz cannot sign up. We tried. The site kept telling us that we were in error, that our number was already registered.

Bitterly, we complained to Howard, the guy we married.

He said, "The Pope probably signed you up already."

You know that harrowing part of the 190 South, the part where you round the curve past the Skyway ...

... (we like to include a picture of the Skyway whenever possible)...

... and head toward downtown?

Today, there was one of those multimillion-dollar signs overhead reading: "SLEEP AWARENESS WEEK." Then it would blink and flash a different message.

The different message was something about don't drive drowsy, it causes accidents. Buzz could not retain it because we were too busy squinting at the letters. There was something that was, well, off.

Continue reading "Expressway sign designed to make you crazy" »

1. The song of the mourning dove. Buzz heard it twice the other day, and in an urban area, too, near the Boulevard Mall.

2. Boom cars in front of our house, rattling our windows. Nothing so screams spring in Buffalo.

3. Best of all ...

Continue reading "3 signs of spring you can't argue with" »

If anything can get is through Monday morning it will be The Buffalo News' video about the new polar bear cub at the Buffalo Zoo.

So cute you cannot stand it.

This bear loves people so much!

Look, the staffer gets to rub its tummy! 

We can't believe how the staffer actually stops rubbing its tummy. How in the world would you stop? Buzz could not bear to leave that bear. We would be sleeping in the cage with it.

It is funny how the polar bear's appearance coincided with the Olcott Polar Bear Swim For Sight.

We must be bi-Polar!