Posts from June 2008

I just had a really start to what should have been a lazy Sunday. So what I ended up doing was just taking a Sunday drive of which I could just get away for a few hours & still come home at a reasonable hour. So I thought, heck why not drive down the 90 to check out the newest casino or in this case Racino (racetrack & casino) Presque Isle Downs Erie, PA.

Well I only lasted there 1/2 hour. The place was absolutely packed as the parking lot was just full. Once inside my friend got ID by security who then proceeded to ask questions about Seneca Niagara, since he has a room booked there next week or so. We basically told him that it was nice & if he wanted to try something different he could go to the bars on Third St. But Yea, The place was wall to wall people. You could not find a machine that was not occupied. The one aspect of the place that made me run was the smoke. Being so progressive in Canada and New York State it just drove me bonkers. I really wanted to check out the thoroughbred racing, but I just couldn't wait until then. So all in all we spend about 1/2 hour in the place. Although I have a few pics to prove it.



One more thing. How the stock of the parent company Moutaineer MNTG is only $5 I just don't understand. This place is going to be a goldmine. On the stupid shuttle bus I heard some slot players comment that the place was not this jammed packed when it had it's grand opening. Casinos in Pennsylvania are just going to be "CHA-CHING!" Yea, Mountaineer is going to some some people from Pittsburgh that are going to play at the Meadows & Wheeling Island, but all I can see for Presque Isle is Expansion. The people that mobbed this place today came from somewhere.


So other than just seeing this place, we went shopping at some mall in Erie & ate dinner at Quaker Steak & Lube. For the most part I just had to check the place out before they open up on Transit Road where Don Pablo's once stood in front of the Regal/Imax. I just had the wings with the cheese/bacon/scallions fries & it was pretty descent.

@jason I think we may have found our answer to that problem...



;-)

I stopped by there on Saturday afternoon. For the first time I didn't go with any of my friends, I went with my Mom. For the first time in quite a while she was up north & available. So we went and it was an interesting time. The first lesson that was established was I really as a wuss compared to my Mom. The point to illustrate this was when I suggested we park in the Kleinhans Music Hall and for the most part it was cool since no one was in the lot, it was early enough before the event later that night and no one was really there watching the place. As we were walking out some guy very far away at the end of the lot was saying something about a ticket. I actually got worried, but my Mom was like, "Who Gives a Shit, If they ticket me I have the money." Yea, I have to admit even though I heard this there was still a bit of anxiety bubbling down below the surface. She has real balls, unfortunately more than I do I sadly admit.

It was funny to see her in action as after the AAF we went to Cafe Europa. After realizing that she could have had X,Y,Z @ Toro she went in there and asked for a menu, to keep! I guess from how she operates in FLA she basically has a book of menus from places to reference addresses, phone numbers and prices. The real fun part was going into LU Modern Classics and having her give her opinion on everything in the store. Good times for sure is all I can say.

So we walked the entire length of the show starting down at the bend of Allen St. I really only picked up a melted 7 Up bottle, just for the fact that it had the old label on it when it was still made with Real Sugar & not High Fructose Corn Syrup. For the most part it was different and cool to hear her really express her disappointment at the the majority of the booths. Heck, she even dragged me to church; Well kind of, it was the open house of the Trinity Episcopal Church. I ended up buying a $2 bottled water from there just for the privilege of checking out the stained glass donated by people that died 100+ years ago.

It was definitely not my usual AAF, as for the most part in years past we would just make it a bar hopping extravaganza. From what I saw most people did do it as I saw a ton of cups originating from Coulter Bay on the street. It was the right move as I just wanted to avoid my "friends" this year & the unbalanced relationships that I have had with them in their favor for many years.

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In my own personal take to @paul
In a crazy way I can see her point, but not in the same light as she was referring. As I have explained to people before, I am one of the few people that would leave this area for the reason of finding a descent wife. Usually the cause if career/job but for me it would be for someone that I can relate to and find attractive.
There are attractive people in WNY, but to be honest I wouldn't want anything to do with the self absorbed hotties that are around here.

So I can agree with you that there ARE attractive people around here. The point I totally disagree on is that there are very few quality people to take them any further than 1 or 2 nights.

Although for me in reality that really isn't too much of a attainable goal. As for me I just can't keep up a "normal relationship" with a "normal girl" just for the sheer fact that I just can't keep up the facade that I must have to go on. Eventually anxious or mildly depressed me will come out & when he does it's all over. So I guess that's why I end up with the goth chicks or the one's with low self esteem/wight issues. Especially the goth chicks, as I actually brighten them up to an extent and they can deal with my semi-regular lows.

At the end of the day on that topic, Dr. Neil Clark Warren is so right; You can't enter into a marriage if you're depressed. Any descent person just won't put up with your moping and whining.

So there it is a vulnerable (e:strip) post. Usually I'll lock it away some place else.

It is kind of funny that the last real American mega brewer is going to be gobbled up by foreigners.
Although they are right in that no one really drinks "American" beer anymore unless it is light or low-carb, it does bring a significant end of an era. The consolidation of the 70's and 80's are going to leave us without a true national brew. Miller is South African & Coors is 1/2 Canadian. Really the only beer large scale national company will be Pabst and their collection of brands of yesteryear. Yea, they tried to do this when they bought Rolling Rock, but in doing so they did alienate the drinkers of the brand. Come one I drank to because it came from Latrobe, PA, not New Jersey where it originates now.

Yea, I do always find an appreciation for Michelob, but the real stuff is hard to find without light or ultra on the bottle. Then again I a friend of mine compared it to whole milk, "It's good when you have it, but you just can't drink it everyday."

it was Bud's fault for never really branching out. They could have bought out the smaller old man beers, but they only came up with brew products that never went anywhere. L.A. Beer, Bud Dry, Ice Draft (although I do miss Bud Ice Draft)

There is only real one weird thing in my mind. Is Busch going to survive Bud? I mean when Schlitz when faded away in the 1980's after people stopped drinking it, the secondary brand "Old Milwaukee" survived & is actually still thriving today. Actually Old Milwaukee is the best selling brand for Pabst. The only thing I can think of is that there are still a bunch of guys still thinking of this commercial: the ultimate misogynist beer as sex commercial ever!

I can't wait to try this out

In kind of the spirit of @metalpeter 's last post I have my own thoughts on the issue, but more so from the transportation side of things. This was influenced by listening to On Point this morning during my drive in to work. It was titled, The End of Affordable Air Travel?

It really reinforced some major points to me, the one being that at some point we are going to go back to flying as a luxury as it was back before regulation. Flights will be sparse and some cities will lose their service all together. The effect on tourism and even say grandparents visiting their kids and grandchildren are going to be major issues. So if someone is really family oriented taking that job down in the Southeast or Southwest may not happen, unless their family moves down with them. Who knows it may lead to someone taking a lower paying job in WNY just so they may see their family often instead of once every 10 years. Yea, you can make the point of keeping in touch with iChat, but really does it make up for a real hug or your grandma's fresh baked goodies?

What really gets me is that with airfare going through the roof taking that trip elsewhere may not be cost effective anymore. If it is going to cost $400 to fly to a city that you can drive to within 8 hours flying will lose out in the end. Going through the B.S at the airport just isn't worth it.

That's where I hope we may have a resurgence with train travel. I remember seeing a special on PBS about the (WIKIPEDIA - Pioneer_Zephyr) and realized what we could have had if train travel wasn't squashed by cheap oil for decades. It would really come in handy now wouldn't it? Could you imagine the Central Terminal if it wasn't piecemealed off 28 years ago? Especially if we had real "High Speed Rail" like they do in Europe & Japan? Not that "higher than the freight train thingy we have now between NYC & DC" Laying the track for a rain system is costly, but once is set up it is a kick ass way of moving people around efficiently in regards to a carbon footprint.

So in the end I think people are going to eventually fall back into the cities by circumstance not by choice @metalpeter We will be like the French, in where the Rich live in the inner city & the poor live in the 'burbs. Some of the sprawl had to deal with people chasing "the best & newest." So where do you build a new house? Out where there is space, especially since you're going to build a McMansion with a 3 car garage & a storage place for that 40' "Dick Boat" and the R.V. You won't fit 3 cars, a camper, boat and jetski in that city lot. So you destroy a forest and build on a swamp so you can squeeze all of those toys in your property. Because you are chasing the next "best of the best" product like the newest line of spring fashion or the newest best high tech device. You wouldn't believe the amount of peices of furniture, rooms and kitchens that are bought and remodeled just so people can show them off to their neighbors. It got beyond utilitarian living & just became a pissing contest of "I have a Ralph Lauren ______ 2005 edition Blah. When it would get to be 2015, time to remodel & change everything even though everything works & is still functional. It's funny as I remember when my older generation of my family all died off they still had most of the same stuff they had when they first moved in to the houses they had. My mom hustled my great uncle's 1950's kitchen table & chairs along with the old school oven. The only reason why he got rid of the 'suffocation death trap" white latch refrigerator was it broke in the 80's & parts were not available any longer. My point is the stuff they had worked just fine & they never felt the need to remodel. Ironically when they passed the stuff they had was extremely valuable, since it was authentic & should have never survived our consumerism culture.

It was brought to my attention last night as I was leaving the R.E.M show. There weren't too many suckers like myself that parked & paid $20 to drive home. Most of the people were crossing the bridge on Lakeshore Blvd to catch the Go Train or the TTC. Yea, that was a good time last night :-) but seriously I wish I could afford to live in Toronto and ditch the car, but that is another post sometime...

Oil up more than $10 a barrel in one Day!!!

Yea, in a sick way I kind of enjoying it. I own shares of UGA the U.S. Gasoline Fund Exchange Traded Fund. It is basically a basket of Gasoline Futures Contracts, so when the price of Gas goes up, so does this Fund. Hey, I just wanted in on a piece of the action. It's a still a capitalist kind of society until next January when most likely things will change drastically. Not because of some grassroots mandate, but by circumstance. This is only the begining. 30 years of an economic boom fed by an easy money orgy is not going to be corrected by 6 months of "flat" growth and bounce back like some bad cold recession like in 2001. This is going to be 1930's time and as prices for everyday things explode like Wilhelm Germany things are going to get ugly.

From my perspective things in this country are going to go left for a very long time. Everyone is going to be affected, heck even Ed McMahon is going to lose his home and he is supposed to be that "Great Depression Generation" that kept saving every penny they made, kept a cellar filled with canned goods & stole all the condiments from the restaurants they went to.

Then again it is what we signed up for when the Alpha Males on Wall St came up with these "innovative" products to make "Joe 6 Pack" a mini Donald Trump. No one complained about inflation when Real Estate Prices shot up to the stratosphere & people had to sign their lives away. What perfect timing was it when the changed the bankruptcy laws right before the top of the slippery slop started to turn? Everyone wanted to keep their profits private when their house doubled or tripled in a few years. Now they want to nationalize the losses when they owe the bank more money now that their mortgage is under water?

It makes me wonder if America is really the ultimate capitalist society that it claims to be? Money like life is a Zero Sum game, the losers pay off the winners, the Credits balance the Debits. Right now it seems that no one wants to pay off what they owe. It may be true that we never want to go too far to the left, since Americans are always for free enterprise and such. But with powerful market forces at work I leave you with this one thought.

What if in the ultimate free market Capitalist way a Hedge Fund cornered the market on some life saving Pharmaceutical Drugs keeping them out of reach of the public; With the intention of holding them on pure speculation that they price would go up? It would be a free market with those with access to capital using their leverage to gain more capital, thus making a profit...

These are interesting times, it will be interesting to remember when before the return to strict regulation people used to drive up the cost of shelter, heat, food, ect.

For the most part I really was a bore this weekend. The only thing I really ventured out in doing was going to check out this attempt at an outdoor festival in Niagara Falls Ontario called Springlicious
It really wasn't all that rocking when I stopped by on Saturday afternoon, although the weather had something to do with it.
Although I have to say one good thing, it was a good feeling to sample food without being attacked by strollers as is so common at any outdoor event in Western New York.

What really surprised me is how much the Niagara Falls Ontario downtown has deteriorated. Queen St is starting to look like any burned out downtown in western New York. For the most part the only thing down there is City Hall and Orchid formerly the Daily Planet.

We then just decided to hit a Real Tim Horton's and do something else. What came next was a stop at the Penn Centre in St. Catherine's. It's just lately I have been feeling less and less Canadian for some reason. It could be the absence of seeing another U.S. plate when I was driving a bit deeper in the Niagara Region. The dollar & customs going back in the U.S. has the lion's share of why Americans just don't visit anymore. The problem with that is being Canadian and feeling part of the country is a core part of my being. Lately I just feel it slipping away on many levels. SO what did I do? I bought a Roots hoodie and I made sure that it featured the lettering Canada on it somewhere. The next thing I did was I stopped at the beer store to buy a 12 pack of Carling Black Label. Canadian beer prices are not cool as it was $20 for a 12 pack of beer that is on par with PBR.

Anyway when ever I have free time and resources I plan on messing around in Canada this summer. It really gets into gear with the R.E.M. concert next weekend, of which I currently have an extra ticket is anyone is interested.

Originally a comment, but I decided to post it due to size.

I wasn't too thrilled about the square last night. To be honest I was there for a grand total of 35 minutes and left. The masses really got to me to be honest. The smoke was as if you were indoors and I just couldn't stand all the people walking aimlessly with a beer in one hand and a cell phone in another. Oh, and those "hot topic" kids on Main st really pissed me off.

All I can say is I'm glad that there really isn't anyone I' too crazy about on this year's schedule. To be honest if there was someone was passionate about, I'd flip. Trying to focus on an artist is tough in the "world's biggest outdoor happy hour" environment. At this point I am happy to pay to see a concert to be around liked minded people, not kids trying to distract themselves or people just there taking up space for something to do. You could throw Lance Diamond up there on stage and still get the 10,000 people crowd. It's all about drinking, free entertainment, and trying to get a phone number, all while trying to to look good in doing so. I can go to Chippewa any weekend for that, if I really wanted it.

The biggest surprise of the night was the amount of people squeezed into Tim Horton's! Not even in Canada do you get so many people getting their coffee & donuts at one time. Yea, it was cold so coffee was in order I suppose.

In closing I just didn't get a good vibe at all from the first Tats.

At this point I wish I could attend more Tuesday's in the Gorge at Artpark. You wont' have to deal with the punk kids or homeless looking people. Shit, I must be getting old & snobby :-/

Lately my viewing habbits have gravitated towards the Showtime Network. Surprisingly the biggest draw for me has not been weeds or some crazy movie, but documentaries. This one Maxed Out (SORRY GOOGLE VIDEO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. LINK WAS -4840432044369494646) sucked me in totally this weekend. This is why the Republicans are going to wander the desert for the next 30 years. In the middle of this doc they show how the unwinding of the bankruptcy laws in this country effectively brought back the Debtors prisons a la Charles Dickens. Two of the main characters of this show Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey are interesting twist to the whole thing. For the most part I can't stand Suze, but to me Dave Ramsey has been the shining light of the Fox Business Channel. The economic climate has finally caught up to his message, "It's cool to be Frugal."

So on one end we have the average people succuming to slavery by the banks and on the other we have the Uber Capitalists. They're kind of the people that @hodown sees on a daily basis in NYC.
Yes, it's long but it does show the pinnacle of what everyone is striving for in the New York Metro Area. Those are the people everyone wants to be or pretends to me at least in their mind. It's kind of ironic that the financial "products" that some of that crowd came up is the fuel that indirectly is helping us burn $4 gas in our cars. To me it's kind of shocking to see the people that can burn though cash like it's nothing be Neanderthals. Since it always that the higher class of people the more civilized or gentrified, but in reality the ultra wealthy may have always been this way, we just never saw it on TMZ.

In the end we need to tilt ourselves to the left, a la FDR style.
We are going to have to turn to civic sacrifice to turn things around for everyone as the decession deepens. That means higher taxes on the corporate/hedge fund crowd & all sorts of other middle class building initiatives.