I’ve got a piece in this month’s insert to The Real Deal, a New York City-based magazine that covers real estate news, about how Buffalo managed to escape the recent credit and housing downturns. Titled Buffalo stays cold — and calm, it details how the conditions in Western New York’s economy and the character of the city itself have kept over-eager flippers, predatory lenders, and other market-crashers (mostly) at bay.
It’s kind of a big deal for me, being my first print published outside the Buffalo-area market (and not on my main squeeze, Lifehacker). It also generated a bit of discussion over at Buffalo Rising. Here’s a standard writerly caveat for you: The story goes much farther than the headline suggests.
Before heading out on a week’s vacation, I had to point out the awesomeness of “The Munchie Box,” picked up by my friend Andrew at Buffalo Buffet. The “standard” size costs about 5 British pounds, comes in a 10-inch pizza box, and includes doner kebab meat, nan bread, chicken tikka, pakora, onion rings, fries, some kind of slaw-type salad, and two kinds of sauce.
I mean, seriously. We in Buffalo have Jim’s SteakOut, Mighty Taco, and roughly 6,387 bars open until at least 2 a.m. serving beef, wings, and all kinds of so-terrible-it’s-fantastic food–not to mention Nick Tahou’s just a short hop away. But it seems a challenge has been issued, one involving whose populace can find the grease-soaked bottom of the culinary barrel first. Let’s get to work on this when I return, shall we?
A ThinkPad, a cat that doesn’t understand personal space, coffee, and water–vital parts of my morning routine.
My social-media-savvy (and skilled) fellow Lifehacker Tamar Weinberg did the yeoman’s job of getting the whole editorial team to spill what we use in discussing, planning, researching, and writing the site. My own picks and preferences are about halfway down the page–they’ll stand out for all the Linux gear (plus the open admission to using Vista without a pistol to my frontal lobe).
Brian Ibbott, creator and host of the long-running, ground-breaking music podcast Coverville, agreed to chat with me last week, and the Q&A is posted at Lifehacker.
It was really weird, in a great way, talking one-on-one with a voice I’ve been hearing for years–on car trips, during dish-washing sessions, over the occasional jog, and in other spots. But he’s very candid, very honest, and didn’t mind when one of my questions went for more than a minute (which got axed in editing, by the way.
If you’re a return visitor, you might notice that I’ve changed the looks of this place. Let me tell you, it’s a lot more fun than house decorating, but it involves just as many challenges.
For those who follow WordPress minutiae, I made the move from the PressRow theme, designed by Chris Pearson, to Cutline, which Pearson also worked on. PressRow hadn’t been seeing any updates in a long time, and I find that managing sidebar “widgets” is a lot easier than manually embedding “plug-ins” on the sidebar.
The sad part? What really pushed the upgrade was the new WordPress iPhone app, which requires an up-to-date installation. I don’t know when, exactly, I’ll be away from my computer, with a wi-fi connection, and in need of writing a quick post, but, hey, what kind of tech writer would I be if I didn’t prepare for the pretend data-pocalypse?
Here’s an exclusive, exciting sneak peek at the late-night fun involved in re-building a site to fit the Cutline theme!
One man, alone (actually, accompanied by a patient wife and/or a friend or two) and unarmed (except with a camera, wallet, iPod touch, keys, a water bottle, pre-applied sunscreen and sunglasses) against a horde (nearly 60, actually) of Buffalo’s restaurants, all lined up on one avenue, for two days.
I wrote up today’s Top 10 feature on Lifehacker, Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done. I wrote about how tools like Tumblr, Foxmarks, and others can make getting your ideas written and posted much easier.
And, yeah, I haven’t posted anything of substance here in a long time. I have no less than five half-thought-out, one-third-written, not-quite-ready posts in draft form. Even when same-day inspiration strikes (New restaurant! New writing clip! Funny thing I found!), it always seems to dissolve when I hit the admin page on this thing, like lime juice into water (I’m really thirsty at the moment).
The biggest reason—blogging for Lifehacker makes up the bulk of my work-work these days. I’m still digging how fun it is to write on-the-fly about technology, but sitting down to write a blog during the off hours feels kind of like, I dunno, returning home from a real estate office and planning how to sell your own home. I’ve also come to realize the value of away-from-the-screen time, both for getting things done on the home front and for my eyes/mind/hands.
I’ve toyed with the idea of giving myself a topic, and a regular schedule, to write about here: Buffalo, food, maybe even blogging itself. I’ll get around to making a decision sooner than later—assuming blogging doesn’t kill me first.
“I don’t believe in this Oscar bullshit, but it is the best movie of the year”
Our local ABC affiliate WKBW, suffering for years under serious cutbacks, accidentally turned the studio microphones on during the big finale of this year’s Oscars (post-spoiler: “No Country for Old Men” won). Rather than embarass their last-in-the-market station, however, the staff provide some astute inadvertent commentary. I question whether an apology was truly necessary.
My favorite line (in response to co-anchor Joanna Pasceri asking “What’s it about?”) is from Keith Radford: “Guy with no expression, keeps blowing up everything?”
I agree with New York Magazine on this one: Give this guy his own live-blog during next year’s telecast. (via Buffalo Pundit, though his link is to the non-embeddable version with better sound).
“We got our thing, but it’s just part of the big thing.” - Zenobia
If you’ve spoken to me recently, or if you’re one of about six people I forced to read my last post on my defunct first blog attempt, you know that Sunday night was a pretty frickin’ huge event for me.
The last season of the best television project I’ve ever seen, The Wire, started its run, leaving me both fulfilled and really, actually nervous about how the last chapter will play out, how it will integrate a topic—journalism and its discontents—near and dear to my heart, and how it will affect the show’s legacy.
I say write “chapter” intentionally, because, as umpteen pundits have pointed out, the show is more “televised novel” than “Dramatic Series” (or whatever category the Emmys have UTTERLY SNUBBED it in). I write “legacy” intentionally because I’m all too aware that the show pulls fewer viewers right now than even a modest hit like “Big Love,” so its best chance of actual impact lies in that new kind of never-ending memorial service known as a DVD boxed set.
But blah blah “What the show means” and yada yada “Where is this season headed?” (for that kind of thing—but good—bookmark Slate’s TV Club for this season). Here’s just a few take-aways, good and bad.
The Good
Bunk—The first shot of the first scene of the first episode is a long, multi-line mind-f#$% by homicide Detective William “Bunk” Moreland on a gullible murder suspect, and it’s a great “welcome back” for long-time fans. The man just carries any scene he’s in, bringing menace, mirth and wisdom to moments like this.
Bubbs—Nobody can envy Andre Royo’s lot in this season, as he takes Bubbles/”Bubbs” down the well-worn “recovering addict” path. This being The Wire though, you know he’s going on his own, with no system to catch and comfort him, and that even if he keeps clean, there might not be a great life waiting for him—kinda realistic, you’d have to imagine.
The Humor—I’d never watched “The Wire” with more than one person until last night, when I hosted a low-key “Season Five Party” at my place for two other couples. Yes, we are all white and middle-class, and yes, I scolded myself many times for throwing a “party” for a show depicting the utter abandonment of the predominantly black, overwhelmingly poor American City. Yet watching the show in a group made me realize how skillfully little moments of humor are woven into what would otherwise seem like a daramtized Howard Zinn tale, with swearing. The opening scene drew five laughs, some in disbelief. A later scene, when a politician sees their face under a gotcha headline and mouths her discontent, brought the whole room up in “Ohhhh!”s. And the little moments of gritty truth the show is sprinkled are way more fun to smirk and nose-breathe at with a crowd.
The One True Newspaper Moment—Critics seem to be lining up evenly on both sides of how realistic or human the characters in this season’s pseudo-Baltimore Sun are. The language and overall tone, however, seem right on. I’ve only had a bit more than five years’ experience in the newspaper trade, but there’s one moment involving an executive editor back-handedly spiking a story—using a sentence that starts off with, “I was talking with [name] at [institution] the other day, and …” that rings all too true, from my own recollections and coffee break tales I’ve heard.
The Bad
Those Other Newspaper Moments—At this early point in the season, I’m a bit wary of how rootsy and truth-seeking they’ve made the obvious hero, City Editor Augustus “Gus” Haynes, and how blatantly clueless his higher-ups come across. And if you know anything about David Simon’s decades-spanning beef with his former editors at the Baltimore Sun, you know that well goes much, much deeper—maybe a whole season’s worth. Then again, I might be a bit too familiar with it to really see it, and I suppose Burrell and Rawls likewise came across as Skeletor and Megatron, at first.
The Electric Piano Borrowed from “Law & Order” in the New Theme—See clip above. I love Steve Earle, but the new opening credits track makes me think someone’s always going to get done right before the commercials at 32 minutes.
No Omar—I used to fall in with the crowd who thought Omar should have been dead about 20 episodes ago. After the wait between season four and five, however, I just want the duster-wearing, shotgun-toting, Deus-Ex-Machina-serving man back in the game
I’m going to try this again after next week’s episode, hopefully in a more timely fashion (thanks, On Demand!).
