The property management company who ran my last apartment has been renovating a house on the corner of elmwood and lafayette for a few years now, never quite finishing it seems.

Since the end of summer there has been a sign, saying that Zilly Cakes was coming soon. I thought that it might be some chain bakery I had never heard of. Every time I would walk by it I would think to go to the listed website, but forget by the time I got back home. Then I just happen to see an article on them for making an Obama cupcake portrait.



So I go to their website and it turns out Zilly Cakes is owned and ran by Zilly Rosen in our own Buffalo. She has had the garage portion of the building rezoned so she can have a bakery and shop. Check out some of her work





She won a gingerbread house contest in 2007 with this



When she does open she will make cakes to order, teach classes, and sell baked yummy goodness. From the site:

Our retail line includes a fresh cupcake bar, icing shots, naked cakes (rated G of course) and cupcake flights in our special tasting booth that last 1 hour and that you can book in advance. In addition to cupcakes individually or by the dozen, we'll have a small but incredibly artistic and delicious line of decorated cookies, miniature cakes, and little stacked cakes for sale

Yum. Yum.

Thank you god and Al Gore for inventing the internet.

Dear employment,

Thank you for paying a visit. We really should do this more often.

kisses.

I just heard about this hot new game coming out for the Wii and I have to ask...




WTF!

In this exciting game there are 30 minigames. In one, you use your remote to fill a bottle, then hold that remote like a bottle to feed a baby, and to finish it off you make the baby burp!

Then there is baby racing. Where you try to keep your baby standing as they race down an inflated bounce house. You can also jump (babies jump?) to knock down the other babies.




I understand babies. They are cute, they make funny faces and noises. I get it. But this level of role play just creeps me out. At least with the tomagachi you could quietly feed them during math class. But frantically pressing a button to make a fully-customizable burp? That is just sick.

Have you heard of this bizarre product from Microsoft. Basically, all those budding vocalists out there can sing into your computer and Songsmith will provide the music. That is a pretty nifty idea. But, like so many nifty ideas Microsoft fails to deliver anything remotely like what we imagine. Instead of quality sound samples we get MIDI. MIDI? Yes, MIDI, in this day in age.

But what happens when you take the vocal track from some of the most iconic music? Just listen to the first minute if you can to see how horribly Songsmith hacks apart these classics.

First, Roxanne by the Police. This is as close as it gets to sounding good.


But it gets so much worse. SO MUCH. Listen to We Will Rock You by Queen


But the winner has to go to Love Shack by the B-52's. This doesn't even sound... like... what the fuck?



edit:

holy shit... Van Halen the lounge act.

If you are reading A-Ha I think this would make an excellent storyboard for your comeback music video.

Buffalo is a little rough around the edges, but a beautiful city. We have some absolute gems in this town and many homes of the middle class from the turn of the century have more character and charm than in other cities. Architecture is clearly part of what makes this city so beautiful. With the Darwin Martin house and renewed talks (and endless studies) about the Richardson Complex a phrase I keep hearing is "architectural tourism". Tourists will flock to the city. Bringing with them money for hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues. Why the Richardson/Olmstead Complex website even says that architectural tourists "spend a great deal more than the average visitor to the area."

So, I decided to google this architectural tourism to see what sort of pony shoes other cities were putting on to draw money spewing tourists. First result: flickr. Ok, a fluke. Second result: Buffalo as a Museum. What followed was a series of sites on the various cities of Italy. From the tower of Pisa to the Vatican. We are so fucked.

I have to assume that our local organizations are taking us for a ride, inventing this brand of tourism. I always wondered, who are these tourists? Who gets a yen to go see the work of their favorite late 19th century architect and make a whole vacation out of it? More so, can these people exist in such numbers as to justify spending this kind of money of fixing up crumbling buildings?

Now, I firmly believe that fixing up the gems is essential to bringing back this town from the dead. But not to draw a dozen tourists to gaze in wonder at an insane asylum, but to draw business and keep people here. Our mentality seems to be we have passed our prime and our best years are behind us. So, we wont tear down a few run of the mill homes to build a hotel. We will jam up a successful business expansion over two years because that means ripping down a home with a faulty foundation. We are scared to damage already damaged specters of our golden age.

makes me wonder if our benefactor has abandoned the Statler Tower yet.

No,

Thank the heavens, I am not going to go on about having a viable local TV station here in Buffalo. No, that would be much to crass and I am sure the Buffalo Rising readerhip has already contemplated how to get millions to move here with the finest in public access. Rather, a moment to highlight some of the finest in local TV adverts.



John Waters. I understand your work now!



rap music. It sells clothing. Dinette sets? Not so much.



That crap.. it just boggles the mind



Already I want to move millions to Rockingham county!

I love filth.

Too bad I will be a good puritan that weekend.

Hey everyone,

Looks like our beloved Senator Clinton was just confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State. So now the ball is in Gov. Patterson's court. Who will he appoint?

Names like Caroline Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo have been circulating from the beginning. But people like Brian Higgins and Byron Brown have been getting focus here.

Who do you think is going to get the appointment?

Patterson is not very popular right now. And if his budget slices and dices every program he is going to be even less popular. He very well may face a primary challenger next year and Andrew Cuomo is just the man to do it. Appointing him would take Patterson's biggest challenger out of the game possibly.

The other way he could play the popularity game is to appoint Kennedy. The world adores a Kennedy and having an ally like her in the Senate could mean both a boost in popularity and a fund raising machine in Washington who owes Patterson big time.

I would like Higgins to get it, but I doubt he will.
I would not like Brown to get it, and I doubt he will.

Kirsten Gillibrand is a congresswoman from just outside Albany. She is white, she is a woman, and she is marginally upstate (Albany is its own economic and cultural morass that has issues different than the burnt out hulls of Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse). In political games things like race and gender are a big deal. She would be a good choice, and an ideal compromise candidate.

So, throw your imaginary money on the table. Who are you betting for?
My Monopoly money is on Gillibrand. Why? Because this is the season of optimism in the face of a gathering storm.