GOOGLOPHOBIA

I am writing, for the second time, to ask that you please remove my name and my email to the editors located on your website ( http://www.buffalobeast.com/44/sic.html ).  It was not meant for publication in the first place.

Both my email, and the Beast article to which it referred, are old news.  They are no longer relevant and do not need to be on your website.

I will check the website again in a few days, at which point I will write again if my email and name have not been removed.  Thank you.

You guys do an otherwise great job with the Beast.

Eric Ameigh

Dear Eric,
We’d love to remove the letter; we really would. But it’s just so much more amusing not to. After all, if we fulfilled your request, we’d never get these nice e-mails from you, and the thought of that just makes us sad.

IF IT LEADS IT BLEEDS

Your article is right on time.  BuffaloPundit ran a greeting video from her that, I think, has disarmed their Kunz-Goldman files.  How about going after the paper's editors and editor in chief?

David Snyder

That’s an excellent idea, David! What do you think we should use—a gun, or something more personal, like a brick?

LOCAL MAN LIKES BAR

Dear Evil Ones,
    We lived to see one of the worst abominations ever witnessed in the civilized metro Buffalo community and this travesty turned into the story that went unreported by the gutless ones. You guys are my last hope of putting this on the forefront of our community's collective consciousness. When I left Buffalo to go to college in 1969, I never thought I would return and hear about a local bar owner's law abiding family being temporarily forced out of his home above his bar at gunpoint by local authorities. That story (with not many more details) was the buzz when this happened to the family operating my new favorite Buffalo hangout, the Grateful Bear & Grill in the city of Lackawanna. I wonder if anyone else out there in your readership can remember anything so extreme as a lawbiding local bar owner who is just trying to make a living being forced out of their home. The W's behind this story need to be put out there.

[…]
    There are those who are tricked by our media to get squeamish around this kind of clientele. Today's fear mongers in the media are causing flashbacks of the paranoia for those who are still fighting against the whole social revolution of the last 50 years. It seems like local politicians and authorities would rather cater to this paranoia instead of bringing in a business that can anchor a neighborhood revival that accompanies an influx of artists. (Read your Harvey McKay insights)  People who knowingly live around any kind of restaurant are always sounding like the people who move next to the airport so they can complain about noise. Lackawanna's ongoing policy of profiling just shows that a broken clock is still right twice a day.These inherently stupid autocrats are being influenced by today's climate of acceptance of profiling and local art suffers with this shortsighted temporary feeling of security needed by social Conservatives.
    But in the case of The Grateful Bear & Grill; the Lackawanna autocrats are just plain stupid to get past this kind of profiling and  they continue to attack the tax paying artists who want to make a stand in our community. Chris Faso ran a very successful business in Florida but he chose to come home to Buffalo to live and he even brought in jobs and opportunities in an environment that did not exist before he set up shop. With so many people abandoning the local communities to find better paying jobs, WHY do people harass someone with a real attraction? I hope The Grateful Bear and Grill will stay as an evening's entertainment alternative to the future Elvis Impersonators sure to come to our new downtown "Gaming Houses."
Paranoid Too,
Stev Suto

Hey Stev,
Next time you’re trying to tell a story, put the bong down first.

KINO > KUNZ

thank you so much for your piece on mary goldman. i have long wondered why in the hell any sort of space was devoted to her incoherent, pseudo-hip rantings about ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. how come no one said anything sooner?! i can see her sitting at her computer, chuckling softly to herself and congratulating herself for being so damn funny. usually that sort of thinking requires medication, or at least some sort of intervention. it just drove me CRAZY.

but truly, it pleases me to no end that as a publication, you are unafraid to talk about things that others won't. mostly because they're already printing it themselves.

and i will ALWAYS take michael gildea and his utterly fantastic reviews over that has been/never was jeff simon anyday.

thanks again.
Carolyn

Yes, Carolyn, it’s amazing that nobody said anything sooner—except us, on 8/18/04, 10/13/04, 12/22/04, 5/26/05, 8/10/05, 3/1/06, and probably a bunch of other times we can’t remember right now. Pay attention, dammit.

HO DEFENDS PIMP

Hi there,
  I had to respond (and I'm sure I'm not alone) to that inane letter written in the last issue by some nimrod who asked, "Whatcha gonna do to appeal to chicks?" I like the fact that he wrote that question after trying to determine, in some ass-backward fashion (did anyone follow that Martha Stewart question?), whether you guys at the Beast are sexist-because some "hip, educated, progressive people" said you were.
  I just wanted to let you know that I love the Beast just the way it is and I happen to be a chick. A number of my friends, a lot of whom also possess vaginas (and are not hermaphrodites)also enjoy reading the Beast. I know, I know, it must seem like such a stretch: there aren't any articles on fashion or on how to drive your man wild in the bedroom or how to make-your-own-frilly-macrame-holiday-table-settings/tea-cozies or personality surveys and there aren't glossies of Brad and Angelina or Paris Hilton or Nicole Ritchie to look at. Just how does the Beast sustain my attention? And why am I reading anyway? Don't I have a pie to bake?
   Yeah, I thought that guy was a dipshit. It never occurred to me that the Beast was sexist. I find your paper to be quite insightful and it makes me laugh my ass off. Both excellent qualities, to be sure. And while it may offend those "womyn" of the razor-abhorrent, politically correct, gender studies' variety, they're mostly stuffy and humorless anyway, so who cares? There are many things in the world that offend me far worse than seeing the words "cunt" or "twat" in print. That being said, I'd like to add a big thank-you for existing. You brighten my day.
 And the next time you embark on a Super-soaker, banana-throwing expedition of any sort, count me in as an enthusiastic volunteer.
-Erica Ladd
(Syracuse, soon to be Buffalo)

P.S. You're gonna make fun of me now, aren't you? Ah, well, I expected as much.

Dear Erica,
That’s enough out of you, skirt. We’ll definitely call you if we have any banana-soaking to do.

[sic] OF WAITING

Since when did you make this a quad-weekly release, I'm not waiting til fucking September for another issue fuck face. I better fucking see an issue on August 23 or I'm going to fuck your shit up. Either that, or I won't buy another Beast T-shirt. I also need a more timely delivery to the Clarence Beast Box. You asshole's made me find a new location for two entire issues, a whole fucking month.EAT SHIT AND DIE.

A faithful beast reader with no money for a subscription, (seriously, I'm at an internet cafe and their trying to make me buy something)
K. McCarthy

Hey K,
You strike us as a somewhat conflicted person. Have you tried going to a psychiatrist and fishing for pills? Well, it would probably cost more than 26 bucks, so we guess that’s out.

HIS BULLAH

Gentlemen,
    I disagree with your entire assertion that media outlets generally show a bias favorable to Israel. But that is not even the main point. While I admit that I am a strong supporter of Israel, it does not prevent me from seeing the many sides of this current conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
    The main problems with your diagnosis are that:
1) You think that Israel is doing its work with some kind of plan. It isn't. In fact, Israel has been caught with a kind of assault that it has never faced before and is feeling its way through the response, making mistakes and succeeding along the way.

2) You do not accept that Hizbollah's success would be an existential threat to the entire State of Israel.

3) You dredge up the King David Hotel bombing as some sort of eternal curse of Judas. Of course Jews are not perfect. That is one of the basic understandings of Judaism. What you failed to mention about the bombing of the King David hotel, either deliberately to make your point or inadvertently out of ignorance, was that it caused David Ben Gurion to point his guns against the Jewish group that perpetrated the act. He went to the point of sinking a ship that contained several Jewish hands and a cargo of badly needed munitions, because that very terrorist group would not capitulate to the legal authority he eventually established.

Did you ever see Lebanese pointing guns at Hizbollah terrorists? No, the southern Lebanese cheer and rejoice, similar to how they cheered and rejoiced on one auspicious Tuesday, 4 years and 11 months ago. I am sure that some Lebanese hate the Hiz. It's only natural to assume that not all of them want a world class terrorist organization living so close. It's like living with the mob.

4) Finally, your most egregious "sin" is to assume that people who are (spiritually) poorer somehow have dibs on being right. They don't.

Perhaps what you are perceiving as bias toward Israel is just your own personal struggle. You know Israel, imperfect as it is, is right, yet you can't bring yourself to accept such a conformist notion in your head.

My advice to you: grow up.
    -Samuel Asher

Wow Sam, you really sized us up. We thought that the American media’s bias in the Israel-Arab conflict was blatant and pervasive, but now we see it’s all in our juvenile minds. And, you know, maybe global warming actually is a hoax. Yeah, and calling the Lebanese “spiritually poorer” than Israelis doesn’t in any way indicate that you are a total dick. Thanks for clearing that up, Sam.

BUCKY BALLS

Dear folks,
This morning I wrote an adaptation of Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd" to the Bucky Phillips case.  It's interesting to ask people about their sympathies for the outlaw, and specifically whether the state troopers are protecting the public or carrying out a vendetta.  In today's Buffalo News, Thomas Burton, lawyer for the Buffalo PBA said that the manhunt was "a counterinsurgency against one person."

To the tune of "Pretty Boy Floyd" by Woody Guthrie

Come gather round me children
A story I will tell
Of Bucky Phillips an outlaw
Chautauqua knew him well.

A man who loved his family
Native freedom was his pride
When his daughter was to birth
He would be at her side.

 He was in Alden prison
Two more days was he stuck
With a can opener in the kitchen
Through the ceiling he cut.

Then he took to the trees and rivers
In the woods he did hide
Every trooper in New York State
Wanted him dead or alive.

The troopers they closed in
His family under arrest
They cordoned off the country
Took the baby from her breast.

Then Bucky was in his hide out
Troopers crept up the hill
Bucky Phillips with his rifle
One of them he killed

To be continued ....

Aaron

That’s real great, Aaron, lionizing a cop-killer like that. Maybe your next number should be a ghost story about a state trooper’s leg.

DICK JOCKEY

    Thank you for goofing on Bauerle.  I have had my own feud with Bauerle for years.  You certainly chose the right approach. Please do not regret your decision to call off the madness.  Tom is a punk ass bitch (or is that a bitch ass punk?) who does carry a handgun.  He has short man's complex with his cowboy boots, his short temper (get it), his alleged shyness, and his HANDGUN.  Tom loves to talk about guns but does not have the balls to fight.  Remember when Tom punched a fellow employee over a parking space at the old WGR studios in the City?  Tom is a chicken shit through and through.  I would love to face him in a parking lot and give him a good beat down.  He is a white trash punk who received an inadequate public school education and who is now trying to catch up.  He once challenged me to an IQ test.  Can you imagine that?  He has an on-air voice that is different from his private voice.  I have met a number of radio and television personalities off the air over the years and I have found most of them to be awkward, unfriendly, strange, and really lacking any reasonable personality at all.  Remember  Doug, Tom's good buddy from WGR?  Doug put out his home telephone number on the air and encouraged people to call him.  I called Doug at home.  His voice sounded different and he was very unfriendly.  I guess that his disabled kid has changed Doug's life.  Too bad Doug.  Another phoney bum.

Do you know that blonde haired, square jawed bitch from channel 4 who does the weather?  I saw her at a local restaurant recently with her huge fat girl friend, presumably from the production booth at WIVB TV.  I said hello to her and said that I was a big fan.  I did nothing else. She acted like I had called her a "cunt."    Notice that she is now growing her hair longer in order to hide her square fucking jaw.  Here is a bitch who had no clue about her hair style and wore it so that her square face and jaw were exaggerated.  Don't these chicks read the hair and make-up magazines?  What a fucking idiot.

Anyway, I love The BEAST.  Keep fucking with the assholes.   "Fuck you, Tom Bauerle."
-Corporatestool

Hey Stool,
Has it ever occurred to you that local media figures seem “awkward, unfriendly,” and “strange” to you because they just don’t like you? Not that you’re an unpleasant person or anything. You seem like a real delight to have around.

NOT GETTING IT

I am writing again to request that you remove my 2004 letter from your website.  It can be found at http://www.buffalobeast.com/44/sic.html.  As I mentioned before, it was an email never meant for publication.  I will continue to make this request on a regular basis until you take the page down or respond in some other way.  Thank you.

Eric Ameigh

Dear Eric,
Your repeated requests have softened our hearts, and we have decided to undertake a series of meetings devoted to creating an independent advisory committee, which will focus on the issue of whether we should remove your letter. In the interim, you will be relieved to know that we will change your name under the letter to “Eric Ameigh, paranoid dweeb.” We hope this remedy meets your needs.