Al's Blog-o-Sphere

After the North Tonawanda Police cited vendors at the Gateway Park concert two weeks ago, the State Liquor Authority has pulled the liquor license putting the event in jeparody for the rest of the season and forcing the promoters to move this weeks headline act to Buffalo. [Tonawanda News article]

The story really begins–like much misery in my life–with the overzealous North Tonawanda Police Department. A few weeks back they dispatched an underage, undercover girl to buy beer at one of the Labatt Blue Light canal concerts. The dumbass working the tap sold the girl beer, and as a result, the state liquor authority revoked the promoters’ alcohol license, making it impossible to raise enough money to pay Mr. Hornsby’s appearance fee. While the NT police still haven’t caught the Booby Bandit that has been loose in the city for the last week, they wrapped up “The Case of the Girl We Hired To Buy Beer” lickety-split. [Middleman web site]

Continue Reading…

My friend, Scott Leffler, will agree with that statement, I’m sure. Let me explain why I’m mad and why I make that statement.

All over the news today has been New York State Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, who made a special trip to Buffalo to announce what he’s been doing to curb child pornography and while he was at it, take time to take a cheap shot at one of the few locally-run technology companies we have, Localnet.

First of all, let me say, I don’t support child pornography, or any form of pornography, in any way. No one is, or at least will admit in public that they are. That’s one of the techniques politicians use to gain support for their personal agenda, though. They take a sacred cow, like child porn, or breast cancer, and use it as a cloak to wrap their real purposes in and get a knee-jerk response in their favor from the majority of the people who don’t take the time to really look at what they are doing. Continue Reading…

You may have seen me or talked to me about the photos I’ve been taking. One of the cool things I do with them is submit them to Buffalo.com’s Spotted galleries. I’ve been a Spotted Photographer for a year or so, and although I haven’t been very active of late, it’s a fun thing to do. Continue Reading…

I’ve been driving a stretch of Transit Road from Lockport to Williamsville/Amherst quite a lot lately. For the past two months, I’ve been chauffer/driving instructor to my 20-year old son, who got himself a summer job at a grocery store 15 miles from home.

Now, I had encouraged him to find a job. Unfortunately, that was the one that found him. He doesn’t have a drivers license, only a permit, so we’ve been using the drive as practice. He drives there, I drive home. I drive back later, when his shift is done, he drives home. It’s double mileage, double gas and almost two hours of my time each time he works, but I don’t mind. This post isn’t about that.

After driving this same stretch of road over and over for a while, I have noticed some annoying trends with the drivers I see on the road. Most, if not all of them stem from one simple thing: They are totally oblivious to anything other than their own self-centered concerns. Continue Reading…