Best of Buffalo
May. 9th, 2006 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Last night was the Best of Buffalo party, where the results of a people's-choice vote of everything Buffalo are announced-- best Italian food, best politician (the new mayor, Byron Brown, won Best Politician and came in second for Worst Politician, but to his credit, he actually showed up to give a short speech at the party, which is more balls than his predecessor ever had), best drag queen, best everything. Best Sausage this year went to Spar's European Sausages, of which we are a long-time customer; usually it goes to Scime's Italian sausages, and the Spar's girl, an old friend, did a triumphant dance with the plaque while the Scime's guy's back was turned. It was a good time.
Also there was a jazz combo playing-- a "gypsy swing" band called Babik who'd won Best Jazz Band-- and we had the Sabres game up on the big screen, with Z and the video guys in the back room fading it to the slideshow they'd made of the results of the voting (in case you missed the announcement) during commercial breaks.
So the Sabres game (they're in the semilfinals for the Cup now, in a series with the Ottawa Senators, long-time arch-rivals) was great, and the crowd was mostly into that, and the jazz combo paused after a goal and their violinist played the "charge!" theme. (You know, like they do on the organ at ballparks: da-da-da-DOT-da-DAAA: "Charge!" and then repeated higher, etc. They also did the "Let's Go Buffalo!" theme.)
Meanwhile all the restaurants were handing out free food from little booths-- the best of everything in Buffalo. I was particularly impressed with the runner-up in the Best BBQ competition-- they're way out in the suburbs so I've never been, but their pulled pork was not so much a solid as perhaps a gel. It was amazingly good.
It was a really good game-- the Buffalo goalie, Miller, is relatively green, as is most of the team, but he's really been on fire lately, and there was one save he made, where he threw his body on the puck, missed it, and then kicked the puck with his foot so that it rebounded off his skate and hit him in the crotch and missed the goal line by less than an inch. It was a crazy-lucky save, and he lay there totally unmoving for like a whole minute not knowing whether it had gone in or not. You could see that he'd nearly had a heart attack.
And they won, in the end-- the Senators, down by one point, had pulled their goalie so they had six men on the ice, and then the Sabres got a penalty so they only had four, and still they managed to hold them off until the clock ran out.
It was more exciting because Artvoice's video department earns their keep operating the Jumbotron at the Sabres' home arena, so they know all the games intimately. (This was an away game, or they couldn't have come to their own party.)
Dave of Jackdaw won both "best musician" as his solo self, and "best band" for Jackdaw, so I congratulated him, and he was contemplating how he could possibly win a third category next year. He didn't perform, more's the pity, but Babik was very good.
I had fun hanging out with the Artvoice people. One of Z's coworkers who always referred to the woman she lives with as her "roommate" actually introduced her as her girlfriend, which is always kind of a nice moment-- the girlfriend in question was of the darkly droll type, and I immensely enjoyed meeting her and hearing her take on being an Artvoice-spouse-- she, of course, hears the gossip the same way I do, and it amused me tremendously when she referred to a particular higher-up as "Skeletor"-- I knew immediately to whom she was referring, and I burst out laughing. He kinda is Skeletor.
Anyhow. I meant to write a more coherent, funny entry about this, but I've decided I'm going to take my computer down and set it up out on the porch, so I gotta reboot, which means I gotta post this before I do anything else, instead of just going off and leaving it for an hour and coming back to revise it like I usually do with long posts. I may post a more concise and witty version of this over on my Elmwoodstrip blog, so I'll link to that if I do.
Also there was a jazz combo playing-- a "gypsy swing" band called Babik who'd won Best Jazz Band-- and we had the Sabres game up on the big screen, with Z and the video guys in the back room fading it to the slideshow they'd made of the results of the voting (in case you missed the announcement) during commercial breaks.
So the Sabres game (they're in the semilfinals for the Cup now, in a series with the Ottawa Senators, long-time arch-rivals) was great, and the crowd was mostly into that, and the jazz combo paused after a goal and their violinist played the "charge!" theme. (You know, like they do on the organ at ballparks: da-da-da-DOT-da-DAAA: "Charge!" and then repeated higher, etc. They also did the "Let's Go Buffalo!" theme.)
Meanwhile all the restaurants were handing out free food from little booths-- the best of everything in Buffalo. I was particularly impressed with the runner-up in the Best BBQ competition-- they're way out in the suburbs so I've never been, but their pulled pork was not so much a solid as perhaps a gel. It was amazingly good.
It was a really good game-- the Buffalo goalie, Miller, is relatively green, as is most of the team, but he's really been on fire lately, and there was one save he made, where he threw his body on the puck, missed it, and then kicked the puck with his foot so that it rebounded off his skate and hit him in the crotch and missed the goal line by less than an inch. It was a crazy-lucky save, and he lay there totally unmoving for like a whole minute not knowing whether it had gone in or not. You could see that he'd nearly had a heart attack.
And they won, in the end-- the Senators, down by one point, had pulled their goalie so they had six men on the ice, and then the Sabres got a penalty so they only had four, and still they managed to hold them off until the clock ran out.
It was more exciting because Artvoice's video department earns their keep operating the Jumbotron at the Sabres' home arena, so they know all the games intimately. (This was an away game, or they couldn't have come to their own party.)
Dave of Jackdaw won both "best musician" as his solo self, and "best band" for Jackdaw, so I congratulated him, and he was contemplating how he could possibly win a third category next year. He didn't perform, more's the pity, but Babik was very good.
I had fun hanging out with the Artvoice people. One of Z's coworkers who always referred to the woman she lives with as her "roommate" actually introduced her as her girlfriend, which is always kind of a nice moment-- the girlfriend in question was of the darkly droll type, and I immensely enjoyed meeting her and hearing her take on being an Artvoice-spouse-- she, of course, hears the gossip the same way I do, and it amused me tremendously when she referred to a particular higher-up as "Skeletor"-- I knew immediately to whom she was referring, and I burst out laughing. He kinda is Skeletor.
Anyhow. I meant to write a more coherent, funny entry about this, but I've decided I'm going to take my computer down and set it up out on the porch, so I gotta reboot, which means I gotta post this before I do anything else, instead of just going off and leaving it for an hour and coming back to revise it like I usually do with long posts. I may post a more concise and witty version of this over on my Elmwoodstrip blog, so I'll link to that if I do.
