Journaling on estrip is easy and free. sign up here

Vincent's Journal

vincent
My Podcast Link

02/23/2009 00:32 #47865

old man weekend
Category: weekend
I'm just not too exciting these days. The highlight of my weekend was going over to Canada & hanging out with a guy I worked with 10 years ago. I meet him at the OTB and just passed the time betting horses. The highlights of the evening was when these 2 guys hit really big. The first one was a friend of my former co-worker & he hit for about $700 or so on a trifecta 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Then one Asian guy came looking like he just got out of a restaurant job by the way he was looking, bet what looked like $100 on some race from Penn National & hit $3700 dollars on a "superfecta" ticket meaning that he had in exact order 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Given that Penn National is a cheap racetrack in the sense that the horses are pretty much almost glue factory stock anything can happen. Needless to say he bought the whole place a round of beer.

The other big deal was the Variety Club or as they call it The Variety Kids Telethon on Ch 7. Is it me or could Buffalo be one of the last places to conduct such things? I mean having 24 hours of programing with people singing and doing other crazy acts for pledge money must have been mind blowing in the 50's and 60's but I can't think of another city that I have been in where they still do that kind of thing. Plus it isn't really the same without Irv or some other kick ass old school personality.

I remember watching some OK indie film by Atom Egoyan which has a telethon as one of it's key plot points which made me smile. But yea, Where are you Jerry Lewis? I guess in a way we still have them when Ch 17 begs for money but they're just really selling you some Ken Burns DVD set & a tote bag.
gardenmama - 02/28/09 12:52
I sometimes wonder if the telethon could raise more money by having people make donations for them NOT to air it. They should just ask Annie DiFranco an/or the GooGoos and some other REAL local musical talent to do some benefit concert for them on air during which people could donate. I think it would be a little more appealing and palatable.

02/19/2009 22:39 #47818

Awesome Rant
Category: finance
Actually this may beat out Cramer's "THEY KNOW NOTHING..." Rant



Part Two later on in the day, a bit more toned down and more debate from the other side.


02/16/2009 23:20 #47769

My experience on Buffalo Flying
Category: air travel
I flew out of Buffalo on the day of that doomed flight. It was kind of strange in retrospect as something was odd but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I was checking the Buffalo News website around 10 but it originally sounded like a Cessna plane crash. Then somehow I flipped through cable news and it was kind of messed up watching the news last night regarding the whole thing. What got me was CNN was using mostly Ch2's stuff with that skype camera & some of Ch 4 stuff, so watching it from Florida was kind of weird. Since to me hearing Scott Levin & Kevin O'Connell was too familiar.

What a great interview from Chris Kausner, he hit the moment perfectly. There is nothing more terrifying and horrific than hearing the scream of a mother who just has been informed that her child is dead.

So yea looking back as I flew out of the airport the same day it just seemed like walking past some strange dude & later realizing that he was some basketball star or something else that you didn't realize at the time.

On another note coming back today was also kind of weird. As I was sitting in the Sarasota airport I saw the "26 seconds of terror" video on CNN, not a good was to start a days long journey on a plane. Then flying in to Buffalo, I sat next to some nice rich attractive older blond haired blue eyed woman from Clarence & talked about it briefly. The funny part was that we didn't fly near Clarence as usually it seems to be the normal flight pattern. We actually ended up flying over Niagara Falls/Tonawanda as I could make out Grand Island and the Seneca Niagara Casino. Now I've flown into BUF many times and never remember flying into the airport this way, once I remember flying out this way going west but not coming in this way. When you think about it you don't want to look out and see a crater with an airplane tail sticking out as you approach the runway, as it was still daylight when we landed. The woman next to us was asking about the body of water we flew next to which was Lake Erie, right before she just put her hands over her face as we began our final descent.

Yea it was kind of freaky flying in today, but the way I look at it, the number isn't going to come up again for a while. Buffalo went 50+ years without a crash, the number was due. Plus if you take a look at all the flights that have been added since we have become a secondary market airport to Toronto, we only increased out odds over the last 10+ years or so. Heck on the ride back on the long term shuttle bus, I was the only US residence besides the driver, everyone else was Canadian.

02/10/2009 23:03 #47708

Annual V-Day Post
Category: love & relationships
Because I'm taking off tomorrow & don't know if I'll have access to a computer I'll make my usual Greg Dulli V-Day post with one of his videos.

I'm not Jaded this V-day. I'm actually feeling the universe throwing me a vibe or two. It's not a dropping roller coaster feeling, but at the same time logically I kind of know that my window for something like that has long passed.

Anyway to the point. I was hanging @ Mothers Saturday night when i was kid of thrown in to the drama of two older women. The one with kind of sexting with some FWB type of thing in which she was lamenting that he "didn't try hard enough to get her into bed that night." There were other vulgar pleasantries eavesdropped on but it was sure enlightening in the sense that I realized that a good chunk of this town is in some kind of FWB situation, I know for myself I've been in more of those kind of situations more than a real committed passionate relationship.

So the next time you get a text @ 3:15 think of thing song


02/08/2009 22:51 #47686

FLA
Category: vacation
Yea, I can't wait to take off to FLA this week. Not a big deal on the surface since I was there less than 7 weeks ago. It's just that this time I'm heading down there when two events are going on, V-Day on Saturday & the Daytona 500 on Sunday. Plus you have all the Sunshine that should be much warmer this time around.

The weird part is that a part of me as I did mention earlier in some post about "getting out of Dodge" for that weekend. Well I'm glad that I didn't...

Yea, if I knew what was good for me I'd turn off my computer for the next 20 days

Really that was just generated by i initially making contact with someone on some stupid dating site & realizing that it is the sister of my ex's ex-boyfriend, if you can follow that logic.

So in a strange set of circumstances I have ended up making a kind of date with someone down there in FLA off another site I use. She's pretty cool and intelligent but in reality she wants someone to go to the 500 with and as an added bonus she's not into V-Day at all. So working out the logistics should be fun, but with the timing falling into place with me being there at the right time and coming back it should not be too difficult. How could I turn down an opportunity to check out the "Superbowl" of stock car racing?

So I'm grateful for having the time and resources to do this as well as the dumb luck for reading someone's blog that is a "friend" of mine. Other than that I should have some fun in the SRQ as usual, now the 2.5 day wait...