Family valued – 2.22.06
Games families will play Families that are far more organized than ours have regular Game Nights. For us, the playing of games is usually sparked by the question, “So you wanna play a game or somethin’?” Remarkably, this happens with some regularity, so we are always on the lookout for a good game that requires…
Fiz – 2.22.06
Once upon a time, when a child wanted a doll, someone made a doll (or they didn’t and the child did without)
‘We have to get involved’
March marks the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a war that bears troubling similarities to the Vietnam War. In the buildup to the war, peace activists all over the world tried to persuade the Bush administration not to attack Iraq. Rochester’s Doug Noble was one of them. Now, Noble is helping coordinate…
Ricardo’s peck of peppers
After eating anonymously, I introduce myself to a restaurant’s owner to set up an interview. This sometimes inspires horror. Chilango’s owner Ricardo Jordan looked particularly nonplussed, but agreed to meet. When the hour came, Jordan greeted me, introduced his wife, Donna, and then disappeared. Donna, personable in the extreme, told me their story. Ricardo, a…
Music Reviews 2.22.06
The Hi-Risers, Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, 3, Jonny Lives!, Mastodon…
Bowed onomatopoeia
So there I was in the Bop Shop Atrium to hear Lauren Radnofskyand her amplified cello last Friday night. The space was jammed with people leaning over the balcony, bathing in the surprisingly clear acoustics, and hanging on every note. In her program notes, Radnofsky suggested people listen “attentively with a high level of concentration,…
Bee Eater hits the ceiling
Meghan Taylor squirms in an old, torn-up beauty parlor chair in her band’s South Avenue rehearsal space. “Can I just say that I’ve had my bags packed for four years? So I’m ready whenever anybody’s ready,” she says. “My shit’s packed.” Taylor, a pink-haired popster, is the lead singer for Bee Eater, a furious hard-rock…
Prepare to be challenged
His intelligent gray eyes belie his perpetual interrupted-nap exterior. He sounds like a cross between Governor Schwarzenegger and Count von Count from Sesame Street, only with a whistling speech impediment that might make a rational person shy away from excessive public speaking. But SlavojZizek is “an academic rock star,” an honest-to-goodness philosopher in an age…
Don’t believe in human goodness
The ironically titled Freedomland deals with a situation resembling the sensational stories that scream from the front pages every day and absolutely absorb the drooling forensic ghouls of the cable news channels. The movie examines such volatile contemporary materials as a missing child, a black suspect, racial tensions, the enormous distance separating comfortable suburbia from…
The XX Files 2.22.06
The people are leaving. They’re packing up their cars and pulling their kids out of school, and they’re leaving and leaving and leaving. They’re looking for work. An average of nearly 1.7 million people has left the state in the past nine years, according to the Manhattan Institute. That’s nearly 200,000 — almost as much…
Reader feedback – 2.22.06
Ken Mehlman the chairman of the Republican National Committee unleashed
Cost of war – 2.22.06
The totals: 2274 US soldiers, 204 Coalition soldiers, and approximately have been killed in Iraq from the beginning of the war and occupation to February 17. 2843 Iraqi police and guardsmen have been killed since January 2005, according to an estimate compiled from news reports. 16,653 US military have been wounded in action since March…
Just clause? Trying to change channels
Reporter Rachel Barnhart: Channel 8’s contract won’t let her move. Gary Ventura Rachel Barnhart won’t talk on the record about suing her former employer. She’s too worried about jeopardizing her career as a television journalist in this town. A former reporter at Channel 8, Barnhart’s a Rochester native, and she’s always wanted to build her…
Crossing the Genesee
Photographs by Gary Ventura Sitting in a small green flatbed boat, John Morehouse says he has become pretty good at running construction crews back and forth between the land where materials for the new Troup-Howell Bridge are unloaded and stored and the construction barges floating out on the river. Navigating the Genesee is trickier than…
164 Gibbs Street
Grove Place: The Place to Live Take a walk downtown on Gibbs Street, north between the Eastman Theater and the Eastman School of Music among the crowds of music students and concert goers. Cross noisy Main Street traffic and walk past the YMCA and the Eastman Living Center. Just around the bend of the road…
