The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

Hometown Zeroes
Two unidentified firemen found themselves not only super-embarrassed, but in seriously deep shit after destroying a $600,000 fire truck while performing a demonstration of the big ladder for a group of schoolchildren. The hush-hush accident happened way back in November outside Ladder 10 on Seneca Street and resulted in only minor injuries to one firefighter. The seventeen-year-old truck toppled over like a palsied brontosaurus, and the investigation concluded that standard procedures were not followed. No shit--how hard is it to pull this off, anyway? Imagine if that happened during a real fucking fire? The two boneheads responsible have been suspended without pay, pretty much a guarantee they'll never be allowed to do anything again at the station besides make coffee and order pizza. The boys at Ladder 10 have been duly shamed and should still be suffering daily indignities from everyone about "that time the truck up and flipped over." When the axe inevitably falls on the Buffalo Fire Department we bet these guys will beg to be shut down and transferred immediately.

Sucks to be You
One of the dumbest things anyone can ever do is leave a loaded gun at home with unattended children. It's the first thing they tell you in Parenting 101, a mistake as obvious as balancing your hairdryer on the edge of the bathtub. If you're a Deputy District Attorney, this should never be an issue. Unfortunately, Mark Sacha did leave a loaded rifle in his closet, and the kids broke it out on a recent boring Saturday night and, of course, the fifteen-year-old accidentally shot his twelve-year-old sister in the head, killing her instantly. Two other kids were in another room. Mom and Dad were at the hospital where Grandpa was dying. Talk about a heavy load of shit. Of course, things could be worse for Sacha-doesn't look like any charges will be filed for some reason.

Hip Hop Huckster
Proving just how desperate most Buffalo area businesses really are, third rate rap star Da' Franchise and his entourage blew into town like a tornado and ran up a massive $350,000 bill before disappearing without a trace. Claiming Buffalo is the rap mecca he always wanted to visit, Da' Franchise somehow convinced recording and production studios he and his posse were in town to lay down mad tracks, shoot a few videos, make a movie, and film a full blown reality television show, a grandiose vision simply (and humbly) dubbed "The $4.4 Million Project." Who could resist such a too-good-to-be-true pitch? Not any of the local music studios (including Chameleon West), video producers, and talent agencies. The rappers also took up six rooms and two jacuzzi suites at the downtown Best Western and skipped out after running up a $15,000 tab. They ate like kings for free, too, courtesy of an embarrassed West Seneca catering firm out almost $100,000. "They stayed 10 or 12 [days] and then fled with a tour bus full of young girls for Boston, I heard," said Denis Tripi, manager of the Best Western.

Talk about livin' large--these guys came in and had a blast, recording beats, shooting videos with choreographed dancers, renting limos, partying all over town, nailing all our hoes, all for free. Damn, now we're pissed too! Anyhow, the Buffalo trip proved inspiring-the Boston Herald reports that the same wankstas just pulled the same scam in Beantown, stiffing another catering firm and the Residence Inn there for thousands before taking their "project" on the road again. Maybe they're trying to rack up a $4.4 million bill?

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Elected
What an exciting time to be Mayor of Buffalo, especially with plans of merging the city into the county moving into high gear. Naturally, Tony Masiello blasted the proposed merger plan making the rounds because it eradicates his job, despite the fact he's a member of the commission which drafted the plan. Politics is funny like that; a guy will sit around at the table for almost a decade with a smile and an approving nod then turn around and call the fellows a bunch of assholes. It's a mayoral election year. Voters would be wise to carefully understand what the candidates think about merging the city into Erie County and ponder why a person would want to run for a job that's supposed to go the way of the buffalo. Of course, Byron Brown and Sam Hoyt don't want a merger, at least not before they can set up shop and enjoy two or three easy terms. So let's get down to the essentials here: First of all, a merger will take many more years to accomplish; we're talking about the coordination and cooperation between many layers of bitterly opposed governments and political players, none of whom want to lose their jobs: the Mayor, the Common Council, the County Executive and the legislature, the senators and representatives in Albany, the Governor, and don't forget all the judges and lawyers once the lawsuits get underway. Yeah, a merger's gonna happen real soon, eight years and counting since the idea was unveiled.

Now as for the mayoral race, that's simple: Masiello couldn't win a fourth term unless slightly more than half the electorate is forcibly lobotomized. A recent poll shows him losing in a landslide against every other candidate. His handlers are already looking for some unlucky local corporation, foundation or charity to park his doofus ass so he can collect a fat paycheck and shut the hell up. That leaves Sam Hoyt and Byron Brown to duke it out, two of the dimmest of dim bulbs Albany has to offer. Little do they realize the BEAST is creating our own perfect candidate using top secret former Soviet Union brainwashing technology and our robot will kick both their asses.

Fuzzy Logic
It's been a big problem for many years in the public school system: those pesky regents exams required for graduation are just too darn tough for today's high school kids. Finally, the Board of Regents is proposing a plan which would allow students who fail by a few points to graduate, sort of like in the Special Olympics, where "close enough" equals a gold medal. The proposition is aimed at helping struggling school systems (i.e. most of Buffalo) to boost their numbers and make teachers and administrators who can almost, but not quite, get their students to pass, look good. In Buffalo the numbers don't lie, that is if you can get the numbers; comparative studies are hard to come by in these parts precisely because they show how pathetic our situation is. An analysis of state figures ranking a dozen school districts in the state with similar socio-economic makeup ranked Buffalo number eleven or twelve out of twelve in categories like test scores, graduation, spending per pupil, spending per teacher, etcetera. No surprises there. We think it's a damn good idea to dumb it down, shit, with the Internet and 5000 channels of television these kids can find the answer to anything they need if given enough time and the proper bandwidth. No wonder so many American jobs are going to sweltering foreign shitholes in India and Pakistan, they either don't have as many mindless distractions or just deal with them a shitload better than we do.

Sky Falling
Four months and counting: Red Budget, Green Budget, no budget, who knows what we'll wind up with, the Yellow Budget? It's a complete mess; a second vote on raising the sales tax to 9.25%, the third highest in the nation, came up two votes shy of the ten it received last month after the hastily amended not-so-Red Budget was agreed upon in a secret meeting and passed without any review just minutes before the deadline would have put the Red Budget into law. The state legislature insists on at least ten votes before it will consider allowing the county to raise the tax, but Giambra is forwarding the measure to Albany even though it won't get voted upon. Joel says he'll agree to a .75% increase to 9 cents on the dollar, but it would mean not sharing with the city and other county municipalities, which was a condition of raising the tax in the first place.

Now poor Joel will look really bad firing thousands of county employees and he's whining about how hard he's working to do what's right for the county, and it's all the OTHER politicians who are screwing us over. From a logical standpoint, what are we supposed to do? Keep raising taxes and fees until nobody can afford to live here except county employees? That would serve 'em right, they'd all wake up one day and realize the only ones left to bleed dry are themselves. Cuts need to be made, deep cuts, across the board, painful ones, yet they must be made if Erie County's going to turn its' horrendous financial affairs around. And that can only start from the top down, not the bottom up. Too bad there's nobody out there determined to right the ship and damn the personal consequences for doing what's needed. Oh well, anyway, nothing for you to get worked up about, just be prepared to cough up more of your hard earned dollars for every bogus effort to "fix" the problem.

Welcome Back Coppers
Three years after the Homicide Squad was disbanded and many, many unsolved murders later, it's been resurrected in an effort to, well, you know, solve some homicides. It was an experiment worth trying by a cash-strapped police department, but the results are conclusive: all them murders ain't gonna solve themselves. A 21 man (and woman) squad devoted solely to solving murder cases gets to start with a backlog of 31 homicides from 2004 alone. Hopefully the trails haven't gone cold yet. Maybe it's the proliferation of all the "CSI" and "Law And Order"-type television shows that got to the police brass. They'd prefer looking cool and being appreciated, not maligned in the press all day long. So the BEAST would like to personally welcome the Homicide Squad back from the dead; we hope it means that less guys are out writing parking tickets.

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The 50 Most Loathsome People in America 2004

21. Alan Colmes
Crimes: An angry conservative’s wet dream: an effete liberal dive artist. As a professional doormat, Colmes’ only tasks are to serve as a comforting aggregate of Republican stereotypes about Democrats and a target for the seething derision of his psychotic guests. Stands idly by while voracious green-blooded co-host utilizes Gestapo tactics against centrist Democrats.

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Inaugural Balls

Allan Uthman

...The real problem isn't that Bush's vision is vague, or that it signals an imperialist agenda that has already been in place for years. It isn't even that he's completely revised his justification for war in Afghanistan and Iraq for a proudly amnesiac public, or that he's launching his trial run at Iran. The real problem about Bush's speech is that it simply isn't true, and doesn't make any sense. It's 100% manure from start to finish.

Devil in an Ice Blue Dress

Matt Taibbi

I’ve always thought that one of America’s best selling points was that it never had a king. If there is one thing that defines us as a people, as opposed to all other peoples, it is this fact. Every other nation in the world has a dozen or so of those embarrassing chapters from the past to live down. Not us.

2004 Timeline: The Year in Regret

[sic] - letters

CHEQUE YOURSELF
Mr. Uthman,

I found your magazine online through a link to your '50 Most Loathsome People' article. Great stuff. However, as a Canadian, I feel the need to point out a few factual errors in your otherwise insightful 'O Buffalo' article:

Time Lies

Matt Taibbi

...What was great about Sullivan's "Year of the Insurgents" column last week was how beautifully it threw the rest of the "Person of the Year" issue into contrast. Here's Sullivan bitching about bloggers needing to stay on the margins where they belong; meanwhile, his "respectable" media company is joyously prancing back and forth along 190 glossy pages with George Bush's cock wedged firmly in its mouth.

Disinformation Age

Allan Uthman

....The problem with the left is that our whole model of changing opinions—that contrary facts will alter people’s views—is inherently flawed. Mundane, oafish Americans, in a national competition to see how many $3.99 “support our troops” ribbon magnets they can fit onto the backs of their Suburbans, simply aren’t interested in reality...Let’s face it; there is a sizable chunk of the population who deny the validity of evolution—evolution. Who are we kidding, thinking we can make them see the errors in Social Security privatization?

Power 1, Truth 0

Michael Manville

On December 12th I opened my Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times and saw in the obituaries that Gary Webb was dead. More specifically, I saw that Gary Webb had killed himself. He had, it seems, shot himself in the head. When movers arrived at his house on Saturday they found a note on the door that said "Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance."

Drowning the Scorpion

Stan Goff

When I was first invited by Dr. Stephen Smith to speak at Winthrop University in South Carolina, I was preparing a trip to Haiti and I didn't give much thought to how I would handle the engagement. I'd just finished being pole-axed by a bout of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and it was everything I could do to just pull the Haiti trip together. So I didn't pay much attention to the person who would appear with me - one Patrick Clawson - to represent "the other side" in a forum/debate billed as "What Next in Iraq? A Post-Election Perspective."

The Top 10 Hacks of the 2004 Election

Matt Taibbi

10 - GEORGE WILL, NEWSWEEK: Will uses big words and pompous literary references to dress up what are basically the brutish and vulgar thinking patterns of a non-union meat-packing plant owner. He is a pig in a lace hat.

Pick of the Litter

Pat Ragpicker

It's 4am on a winter night, and I'm parked on a dead end street near Kaisertown. It’s a secluded corner of the city I found by driving around aimlessly. I'm new to town, and penniless after buying my van with $700 I squirreled away the last time I got a paycheck. That was 7 months ago. Over those months, I managed to live off a few hundred bucks while sleeping in a warehouse closet and helping some friends make a TV show to try selling to a network.

Tortures-R-Us

Christopher Lord

Iraqis wondering what the next phase of the Republicans' invasion of their country will bring should consider El Aguacate airstrip in Honduras. In 2001, 185 bodies were dug up there: the victims were the 'terrorists' and 'enemies of democracy' of the day.

O Buffalo

Al Uthman

It's time to face some unpleasant facts, Buffalo. This country may not be the best place for us anymore. On November 2nd, we all bore witness to a terrible turning point in our history; a bad lifestyle choice, if you will. We had the chance to reject the increasing madness of our nation's leadership, their blind march to pointless war and craven desire to take advantage of us in every manner conceivable, and we blew it. America has spoken, and it said "duh."