Growing up AAA- Bisons Opening Day

Buffalo is a AAA city and that is nothing to be ashamed of. I read somewhere that in 1950 the population of the Queen City was somewhere around 1,000,000 people. Last I saw it was right around 300,000. Not too shocking considering the plight of the cities in New York that are not New York City. Our "representatives" in Albany do little to dispel the notion that there are actually other cities in this state, but that's a whole different ball of worms we're opening up there. We're a triple A city, and dammit, I'm proud to sort of live here. I actually live in a town about a half an hour north of Buffalo in a completely different county, but I was a season ticket holder of the Buffalo Bills for 10 years before my daughter was born, and am an avid fan of the Sabres, so I kinda consider myself a pseudo-quasi citizen, and I don't even have to really live there. Sort of.

At one time, not that long ago, Buffalo was a three sport city. We have the aforementioned Bills and Sabres, and the departed NBA Buffalo Braves, who pulled up stakes in 1978 for San Diego and eventually landed in Los Angeles to become the laughing stock of the league in the form of the Clippers. And now, the owner of the Bills is holding press conferences claiming he can't keep the team here unless changes are made to the way the NFL splits up its incomprehensible amount of cash. So that's not good. The Bills will probably end up in LA as well. It would only be fitting. The Sabres are back in the playoffs after taking the last 5 years off, and will win the Cup this year. Bet the farm.

If you're looking for a family event, the Sabres games are fairly tame unless they are playing a Canadian team. Especially the Leafs. Leaf games in Toronto are sold out well into the 3012 season, so every reprobate Canadian who either can't get tickets or has been banned from ever again attending games at Air Canada Center shows up in Buffalo when the Leafs are in town. And they drink. A lot. They refuse to stand and take off their hats during the National Anthem; they drink gallons of beer and swear at the home fans; and they drive poorly on their way back to the Peace Bridge. Unpleasant creatures here and back in Canada. Again, another subject.

The Bills games, on the other hand, more closely resemble one of Caligula's Roman orgies than a family event. The NFL gets all family-values when Janet Jackson's boob pops out for a nanosecond, but chooses to look elsewhere when the colossally drunk moron behind me throws up for the fourth time, screams something in which only the obscenities are understandable, smokes a joint and then passes out in the aforementioned vomit. Don't get me wrong. I love the Bills games. I was that drunk on a number of occasions. But don't give me the crap about caring how our children's delicate sensibilities were assaulted on that fateful Superbowl Sunday. On one particular football Sunday here in Buffalo, a couple was arrested for having sex in the seats. A number of years ago, a guy got hit in the head with a beer bottle and died. Babies are conceived there, and people die there. The porta-johns in the parking lot are routinely covered with blood and puke. This is NOT family entertainment. Stop pretending. By the way, I'll be queuing up for tickets as soon as they go on sale. But I'll be leaving the family unit at home.

Opening Day for our AAA Buffalo Bisons was last Friday. Good Friday. My wife, my sister, my four-year old daughter Jessie and I geared up in our Bisons jerseys and hats and made the trip to downtown Buffalo. We ate a ton of ice-cream, popcorn, peanuts and crackerjacks, had a couple beers, stood up, removed our hats and sang the National Anthem then stood again in the seventh inning stretch and sang "God Bless America" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," and watched the home team whup the visiting Columbus Clippers 9-1. All this and no shrieking obscenities, vomit or public humping. Earlier today, I called in sick to work, called my daughter's pre-school and called her in sick, and we went to the ballpark to watch the Bisons beat the Richmond Braves 4-2. On the way home, Jessie looked at me and said, "Thank you for taking me to the ballgame." This from a kid who has to be prompted to thank people for birthday presents. I'm thankful as well. Thankful we have a AAA baseball team. Take me out to the ballgame.

Escalofrio! Sacrificial Virgin vs. The Blood of Satan

I first became aware of Satan's Blood via an ad in the "Phantom of the Movies' Videoscope" fanzine. This particular edition of the film is distributed by Mondo Macabro (who released another hard-to-find 70's classic, the excellent Alucarda) and is touted as being the "uncut Euro edition." I was overjoyed to find that Netflix offered the film, and quickly put it on the fast track to the top of the queue. When it arrived, I cracked a Bud, popped up a bag of the "sopping wet with butter" microwave corn, pulled that big, red envelope open and and immediately checked the running time. My theory is that very few films can survive a running time exceeding 90 minutes. At first I thought this was a personal attention span issue, but I've revised that hypothesis. If an unworthy movie starts to stray over the ninety minute mark, I get to thinking about all the other things I could be doing like reading a good book, playing hockey on the Playstation 2, making obscene phone calls to local daycare centers, torturing small animals, those sorts of things.

I've got two good examples of recent films that shattered the ninety minute mark and were completely unworthy of their epic running times. The first is Wedding Crashers, a movie with two very funny guys, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. It starts off as a nice premise for a Saturday Night Live sketch, and is actually laugh out loud funny for about 40 minutes. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't end after 40 minutes. As the movie soared past the 90 minute mark and seemed no closer to any kind of resolution than it did shortly after the credit sequence, I wandered over to the DVD player, and checked the running time of the film. Two hours and 10 minutes. My thoughts immediately wandered to the box of hamsters in the basement whose eyes I'd been thinking about spraying with Tilex. The same goes for The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Starts out funny, but after riding around on this one-joke pony for 2 hours and 13 minutes, I was ready to dismount and beat the animal to death purely out of boredom and meanness. To be fair, I did subject myself to the "unrated, director's cut" of both of these movies, and in hindsight that seems like a poor decision. I'm personally looking forward to the release of the unrated 2 hour and 35 minute director's cut of Porky's 2: The Next Day, and the 3 hour re-imagining of Ski School.

But, back to Satan's Blood. Director Carlos Puerto's 1977 Satan worhip flick clocks in at just over an hour and twenty minutes. And that's the "uncut Euro edition." Now we're talking. And there's a full frontal nude sacrifice to Satan before the credits roll which seems to have absolutely nothing to do with any of the events that take place after the credits roll. My kind of flick already. Since this is the uncut Euro edition, there must be versions of this where all the gore and nudity is cut out, and that version is probably around eight and a half minutes long. Here's a run-on sentence plot synopsis: An idiotic couple and their dog go for a car ride; get lured to the isolated home of a pair of Satan worshippers by a ridiculous ruse; play around with a real cool Ouija board that tells the chick that she's still in love with her husband's brother; are given drugged Kool aid in wine glasses that makes them extremely horny and forgetful; have an oiled up orgy inside a big pentagram painted on the living room floor; find out their dog has been butchered; miss literally dozens of chances to get the hell out; end up sort of killing the Devil worshippers; go back to their apartment; find out that even their dog is a Satanist; and get stabbed to death and resurrected just in time for a predictable twist ending. All this in a very manageable 82 minutes. Highly recommended, and you can watch the whole thing, go back and check out the lengthy orgy scene and pop a salisbury steak Hungry Man in the microwave and eat it, all in less time than it takes to watch The 40 Year-Old Virgin, which has exactly zero oiled up Satanic orgy scenes. The decision is yours.

Immigration Problem: Solved!

Who the hell is in charge of rounding up illegal aliens and sending them back from whence they came? If I'm the Chief, or Commissioner, or Captain of whatever government organization that's responsible, I would gather the boys together and sit them in front of the evening news. Then I would say something like, "OK, guys. See that enormous gathering of criminals marching through the streets, demanding to have their criminal actions decriminalized? GET YOUR LAZY, DUMB ASSES OUT THERE AND ROUND 'EM UP, FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS!" Then I would put together rallies for the legalization of murder and rape and armed robbery and things like that, wait to see who showed up for them, and arrest all of them too. This whole thing seems like it's a godsend for law enforcement.

Look Ma! I'm on "Cops!"

NASCAR. I'm new to the sport. I never would have even thought about becoming involved with a 5th sport, but a couple of years ago I was talked into throwing in $2 a week for a NASCAR office pool. The pool itself is a veritable chess match, filled with strategy, in which the most cunning player triumphs. We draw two random numbers which correspond to the starting positions of drivers. And that's it. But at least you have somebody to root for. Now I find myself actually tuning in to watch the damn thing.

I believe my distaste for NASCAR is rooted in a trip to a local stock car race when I was eight years old. A neighbor dad rounded up a bunch of us kids and we trekked out to Lancaster Raceway. I found the races to be unbearably loud and inhumanly boring. I found myself hating everyone around me, and plotting ways in which I might be able to murder all of them and get away with it. Then after about an hour, I decided that getting away with it wasn't all that important.

I hate to return to the Olympics here in this blog, but again they raise their ugly friggin' head. The Olympics seem to be largely made up of racing. Olympians race on skis, on foot, in water, and on skates. And damn, that's boring. I watch one horse race a year, and that's mainly for an excuse to drink mint juleps and wear a funny hat. Racing is the basest of sports. Just run, skate, swim or ski faster than everyone else, and you win. It falls into the same class of sport with weight lifting and javelin/discus. Bowling and dodgeball look like rocket science.

And finally, and maybe most importantly, NASCAR is a redneck thang. A white trash joint. No shirt or shoes wearing, domestic disturbance causing, pickup truck with the big old Confederate flag sticker driving rednecks watch this sport. Of course, they probably watch a lot of things. They probably watch the evening news now and again. They might even check out re-runs of "The Twilight Zone" or tune into a late night creature feature or Sunday football. They probably watch all kinds of stuff I watch. Does this fact inch me one step closer to the local trailer park? Am I destined for an appearance on "Cops" with my pasty white chest beared for the world to see, standing on the front porch amidst a sea of empty Natural Light cans, with my fat, angry, black and blue wife screaming obscenities at me through a busted screen door? Fact is, a bajillion people are watching NASCAR and they can't all be taking weekly trips to the holding center waiting for their spouse to sober up and drop the charges. And, I find myself enjoying the races, God help me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna pour myself a snifter of brandy, pop in a Fellini film, and then head upstairs and smack the old lady. Gentlemen, start your engines.