Category Archives: Culture
My Monsters
I’ve hung them up in two apartments and I can’t imagine a place feeling like home without them. I’m talking about my monsters. Three framed drawings by a little kid I don’t even know, who I’m sure I’ll never meet. They’re perfect.
A couple years ago I was clicking around online and came across an article about a little boy with leukemia. Similar to Batkid now out in San Francisco in that he’s sick and he’s awesome. Come on, you can’t hear about a kid like this and not have tears in your eyes.
Go pull up video of Batkid. That’s the little boy who, thanks to Make A Wish, is surrounded by hundreds of people cheering him on throughout the city, while he saves a woman tied up by the Riddler and gets to ride around in a freakin Lamborghini Batmobile. Tell me there aren’t tears.
That’s how it was when I came across this story. The kid I read an article on, his name’s Aidan. He loves monsters. Drawing them, watching monster movies, making his own costumes. Which is good, since he spent most of his childhood up until that point in a hospital bed. Plenty of time to draw monsters. And I’m talking the classics: Frankenstein’s monsters, the Wolfman, Dracula and Count Orlock. There’s a difference.
He got my attention. If I wasn’t sold on this kid already, seeing pictures of Halloween when he got pulled around in a wagon dressed as Jigsaw’s dummy from Saw so he could trick-or-treat, did the trick. This kid is awesome.
I’d just purchased the Legacy set of Frankenstein movies that had a bunch of the old Boris Karloff monster flicks. Thanks to Netflix I watched the Wolfman, Dracula, the Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man. All those great old Universal flicks that started everything. I also had Monster Squad, one of the greatest movies of my childhood. At the time it was recently out on DVD and I snagged it. It takes all those old great horror icons and rolls them together with a Goonies-esque group of kids. Who doesn’t love this stuff?
the one in the middle looks just like Kevin
The reason this article on Aidan was out there though was because his aunt, in an attempt to raise some money towards his hospital bills, had taken his drawings and put them up for sale on Etsy. Not a bad idea. Well, unless you’re me. Because now I have to buy one, right? But how can I choose? I just went to the site to browse, then I talked myself into buy one. Then I double-checked my bank balance and decided I could get three. It’s for a good cause, it’s ok.
I went with the classics. Wolfman. Frankenstein’s Monster. And Dracula. But not really. There’s a difference between Dracula and Count Orlock. You should know. I’m not going into that. Why did I ultimately go with Nosferatu over a Universal vampire? Was it that then all three would be in different colored marker? Yeah, that’s probably it. But it may have been that I had to give it to this kid that he knew the ripped off Max Schreck/W.F. Murnau version. That’s going to be my official position.
But I realize now that my choices were perfect. Not only did I do something cool by purchasing these, but now I have my monsters, I have a good story to tell about how I ended up with these kid’s drawings framed on my wall. Oddly enough, these actually represent my two friends and I.
No, no, hear me out on this: Frankenstein’s monster is covered in scars, but the ones on his hands at first glance look like your typical hash marks for keeping score. Much like I had to do on New Year’s Eve. Marks on one hand for bottles of champagne I drank, marks on the other for shots. Just in case I had to go the hospital. The Wolfman is obviously Kevin who could probably braid his back hair and can grow a full beard before lunch. And Nosferatu? There’s this thing the three of us tend to do now and it came about after we lived together for a few years. It unquestionably originated with Alan. When someone comes into the room at night and turns the light on he will hiss and has gone so far as to throw his hands up in front of his face as if clawing at the light. He started it. We all do it. Its reflex now, there’s no stopping it. Our children will end up doing it.
So not only could I support this great little kid, who has since gone into remission, and his family by buying a few of his drawings, I’ve also, oddly enough, ended up with monster-caricatures of my best friends and I. Money well spent.
the Mystery of Charles E. Clarke
previously published on BuffaloSoapBox
I rely on Wikipedia for a lot of things, but have learned use it only as a jumping off point. The articles may give you a decent overview, but who hasn’t found contradicting information within one or hugely uninformative entries altogether?
That was the case when I decided to look into Forest Lawn. I wasn’t looking for an extensive history and I didn’t need a book’s worth of information on its life story. I needed just this much information how it came into being and the people involved in that.
The Wiki article mentions that Forest Lawn was “founded in 1849 by Charles E. Clarke” and then mentions some notable graves. OK, Wiki, let’s click on that and see just who is Charles E. Clarke? Apparently an individual with no ties to Buffalo whatsoever, at least according to his article.
While Wiki mentions that Clarke practice law in Watertown (smallest city to have a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) and Great Bend; and that he served as a Whig Representative from New York in Congress beginning the same year he founded Forest Lawn, there was no mention of Buffalo. Before Congress he’d served in the State Assembly from Jefferson County. It says he was born in Connecticut, was educated at Yale and lived at the other end of Lake Ontario for the latter part of his life—what interest did he have with founding a cemetery in Buffalo, and one that he ultimately wasn’t even buried in?
I was about to fire off a quick email to a friend who knows a great deal of useless Buffalo architectural information along the lines of “Who the hell is Charles E. Clarke?” when common sense—and the more logical first step—dawned on me: why not see what Forest Lawn has to say about him?
So, to the History of Forest Lawn, which explained things a bit more. It goes into the opening of the Erie Canal turning Buffalo into a thriving western outpost, the gateway to the west essentially, and with the introduction of Joseph Dart’s steam-powered grain elevator in 1842, the City becoming the “busiest grain-transfer point in the world, surpassing London, Odessa and Rotterdam.”
But Charles Clarke—focus. He’s only described as a “Buffalo lawyer” but Buffalo is mentioned, so I suppose that’s a win? Its something.
In The Dictionary of the United States Congress and the General Government complied back in the day by Charles Lanman, lists him only as a “Representative in Congress, from that state” (New York), but also as having been born in New York. Not Connecticut?
So he was a Buffalo lawyer during the most successful period in the City’s history. That’s cool. Apparently he was also enamored with the Pére-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and decided that Buffalo, with its growing reputation as a national commercial terminus and the literal boatloads of cash making their way into the City, would eventually need a similar resting ground.
Like its Parisian progenitor, Clarke’s cemetery was to be built outside the city— 2½ miles outside actually. Think about that: at the time he purchased the land that included rolling hills and bubbling streams, Forest Lawn was originally 2½ miles from the City of Buffalo. Most of what lies within that area didn’t exist.
And while that doesn’t seem like a big distance, Delaware Park is less then two miles.
When was the last time you walked that? You stopped halfway around didn’t you? No, don’t pretend it was to look at the bison, you couldn’t even make it once around, could you?
City of Buffalo, 1849
City of Buffalo, 1849In 1832, North Street was the northern border of the City and it wasn’t until 1868 that the border was moved to Ferry Street and the first generation of mansions on what quickly became ‘Millionaire’s Row’ went up. Even then, there was about a half mile between the northern edge of the City and Forest Lawn Cemetery. Like the Pére-Lachaise, the city would soon develop around the cemetery, offering residents a reflective escape from the noisy city streets without having to travel miles to open country.
Clarke also found inspiration in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, which looked to Pére-Lachaise as well when it was established in 1831 as America’s first rural or garden cemetery.
All three sought to provide a rural cemetery that “encouraged people to walk the grounds, admire the funerary art, and commune with nature.”
His remains were moved to Forest Lawn in 1884, which probably explains why he looks so pissed.
In addition to Clarke’s work thinning out foliage on hilltops, adding more trees to the meadows, creating twisting roadways that at the time were considered absurdly wide, but intended to allow room for parking one’s carriage, he also instituted a policy of “providing interesting and appropriate sculpture to the natural setting of Forest Lawn.”
The first statue in the cemetery was of Red Jacket, celebrating his influence in establishing a relationship between the Seneca and US after the revolution, as well as fighting in the War of 1812 at the Battles of Fort George and Chippawa. That statue was commissioned by personally by Clarke.
Today the cemetery features sculptures and monuments celebrating Presidents, industrialists, innovators and businessmen who made Buffalo their home and in doing so created the foundation the City was built on.
From its first inhabitant, Joseph Dart, to President and hospital namesake Millard Fillmore and George Birge of the Pierce-Arrow Motor Company, Louise Blanchard Bethune, the country’s first professional woman architect and designer of the Hotel Lafayette, and Albert James Myer, founder of the National Weather Service, the list of figures prominent both nationally and worldwide throughout history who made their homes and livelihoods in Buffalo is impressive. And Rick James is there, too.
To paraphrase the Forest Lawn website, the cemetery serves both the living and the dead of the City as an outdoor sculptural chronicle of local history and accomplishment. And, according to Wikipedia, all thanks to a guy who had absolutely nothing to do with Buffalo.
Fourteen Rounds / Buffalo’s Small Part in the Life of “Boom Boom” Mancini
previously published on Buffalo SoapBox
On November 13, 1982, lightweight champion of the world Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini defended his title against Duk Koo Kim. The fight lasted fourteen rounds, but minutes after Mancini was declared the winner by TKO, Kim collapsed and fell into a coma. Three days later, as a result of a subdural hematoma, Kim was declared dead.
This fight alone had lasting effects on the sport of boxing, most notably that title matches were reduced to twelve rounds rather than fifteen, as well as a significant increase in the thoroughness of pre-fight medical exams.
The death of Kim, and his fatal injury being ruled the result of one punch, had a lasting effect on 21-year-old Mancini as well. Blaming himself, he traveled to South Korea to attend his opponent’s funeral and struggled to overcome his guilt and get back in the ring. Despite that, many sports writers have asserted that he was never the same fighter he was before Kim’s death.
But Mancini is a significant part of Buffalo’s sports history and not simply because he grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, a town built on the steel industry and feels a hometown kinship with the Queen City; and not because he’s proudly declared that “Buffalo was like a second home to me. I’d been going there since I was a kid.”
No, Buffalo plays a large role in Mancini’s boxing career because it was at Memorial Auditorium on June 1, 1984, that he lost his lightweight title to Livingstone Bramble. The build up to the Mancini-Bramble fight played out like a scene from Rocky III, and later Mancini himself would claim he had to fight Bramble again because the story of that rematch had already been told in the film. It had been written before it had happened and he had to make it come true. Leading up to their first fight, Bramble, of course, took on the role of Clubber Lange. Throughout the press conferences he provoked Mancini, and even his manager stoked Boom Boom’s anger by referring to him as a murderer to reporters for the Kim fight.
Bramble later regretted his behavior, admitting it was an act to unnerve Mancini and keep him angry, keep him off balance and charging forward. The tactic worked. After 14 rounds he was defeated by Livingston Bramble and spent the night in Millard Fillmore Hospital after receiving several stitches over each eye.
The two would face each other again in Reno, but Mancini would lose once more, this time in a 15 round decision. He would lose by one point on each of the three judges’ scorecards, and amidst the boos of the crowd that had believed he had earned his title back, Bramble would tell him that he loved him. Through the blood and cuts and swollen eyes, as the two men beat on each other for fifteen grueling rounds, Mancini never let up.
Gas Station Burrito 