2.27.2007

GOT COFFEE??


Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

2.25.2007

My Chemical View - From Belleville, NJ

Funny, but I grew up with the same view of the meadowlands-farts on fire ... and I didn't become a disgruntled rock star!


Chemical equation(http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/derogatis/271768,SHO-Sunday-chemical25.article )

February 25, 2007

BY JIM DeROGATIS Pop Music Critic
To fully appreciate glam/goth pop-punk chart-toppers My Chemical Romance, it helps to understand where the band's leader grew up. Belleville, N.J., is a run-down blue-collar suburb sandwiched between Newark, which still hasn't recovered from the riots of 1968, and Jersey City, one of the ugliest and most corrupt burgs in America.
I know: I grew up there, too, not far from the Pulaski Skyway, which connects Jersey City and Newark. Tony Soprano drives over this elevated highway during the opening of every episode of HBO's mob series; it runs past tank farms and chemical factories and spans the PJP Landfill, which for decades had the distinction of being the only toxic site on the federal Superfund cleanup list that was actually on fire.

When you'd drive over the Pulaski Skyway at night -- as Gerard Way and his brother Mikey did when they were old enough to go to rock shows in Manhattan, a mere 10 miles but an entire universe away -- you could see the conflagrations smoldering underground. It looked like Dante's "Inferno" -- or a visual evocation of the music of My Chemical Romance. The quintet's 29-year-old vocalist wholeheartedly agrees. ...
Maybe in my next life?

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.


Old Belleville, N.J.

2.21.2007

BELLWOOD CRIER HAS-BEEN

Over the summer of 1964 I had forgotten how to spell. This became painfully aware to me when my new fifth grade teacher at School 10, Mrs. James, asked the class to spell "been" on a quiz.

Flushing, I found I could not write past the letter "b" to begin with, let alone figure whether she wanted a feed bin or a has been. Here, a few days into the year I was washed up. There was so much to learn about how they do things in public school.
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Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

2.16.2007

JOB ROCK IN PROSE

In 1970 my 11th grade English class was broken down into several groups to do group book reports. The group I was in selected The Strawberry Statement Notes of a College Revolutionary by James Simon Kunen.

Of the five students in my group, I was the only one who read the book through in three days and started reading it again. No one else in my group even liked the book and were struggling with themselves to read it at least once.

I loved that book. I began writing after reading that book, and most of my early writings were in that off-beat unrelated style.

It was fun being a writer. I'd tell anyone who asked, "Yeah, I'm writing a book."
They'd always ask, "About what?"


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Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

2.14.2007

LITTLE CHILDREN - OLD FAITHFUL

Reading in today’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed about Kate Winslet’s Academy Award nomination for her role the film version of Tom Perrotta’s novel Little Children, I’m reminded that I never did get to see the show in the theatre.

I did want to see how they adapted that terrific novel into a film.

Perhaps if Ms. Winslet wins, the film will make another round of theatres before the DVD comes out on April 24.

Speaking of Valentine’s Day (the topic of “Old Faithful” by Lionel Shriver), last Saturday I spent the morning in Border’s and selected found one of Perrotta’s earlier novels, Wishbones, and grabbed it for my goody bag. As an extra delight, he had signed it on a whirlwind tour of Wayne, N.J., I suppose.

But I’m looking forward to a good read as soon as I get home through the blizzard and can open my gifts.


Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

2.11.2007

JUST ANOTHER DAY ON POLICE BEAT

It was just another day on Police Beat. I cover Police Beat. That's my job. That's what I do.

Walking through cluttered halls, checking out wanted posters, looking for someone I know, someone I could turn in.

None of the posterized people look familiar. I'd have to stop counting the reward money. Guess all my friends are dead or in jail or have real jobs.

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Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

2.03.2007

Uncle Floyd and the Martini Party

After four decades in show business, you know you've reached your peak when you get a show at a pool club in February in Nutley, New Jersey.


Don't kill the messenger, that's what our old friend Uncle Floyd Vivino said Friday night at the pool club in Nutley.

Billed as Ed Zazzali's Martini Party - Dinner and the Comedic Talent of Uncle Floyd, well, how could it miss? You got a menu of 20 martinis. You were fine if you didn't order the ever popular Pomegranate Martini. After 10 minutes the bartender finally gave up looking for the pomegranate juice.

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reservedUncle Floyd gets tagged by fan

We had a terrific table for two right near the bar. Floyd's stage was at the other end of the floor. For the lines that didn't come through the distant speakers, several helpful guys at the bar offered their own punch lines and interpretations of the material. This was a lot of fun during the sing-along of the Robert Hall commercials.

For dinner, you could have the chicken, the steak or the fish. One of us had the chicken, which wasn't so bad. Another of us had the steak, not an especially appetizing reason to come back to the Diamond Spring Italian Restaurant & Bar.

For the guys at the bar, in case Floyd got boring, the two bartenders (neither of which, it seemed, ever located the Pomagranate juice) left the four TV sets tuned into ESPN. As for the regular fans, there was the flat screen TV midway in the hall which showed what looked like the PBS fly-over of Italy.

Nearly 30 years ago (Feb.10, 1977) I wrote my first article about Uncle Floyd. Since then, we've seen him at his Channel 68 TV studio (and later the NJN studio). Had lunch with the mayor of Bloomfield, been to the Hi-Ho Club, the county theatre in Union, the stereo store in Bloomfield and the William Carlos Williams Center (three or four times!) where we saw him alone and with John Dull and friends, and, of course when he opened his nightclub at the Holiday Inn in Wayne amidst the never-ending construction on Route 46.

There was a time when I saw him come into his TV studio on Wednesdays when they filmed the show in the OBC studio in Nutley. I was working at the newspaper and he always said, "Hello, Anthony," when he saw me. (That was my name... He said he introduced Uncle Tonoose to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: "Tonoose-Toulouse, Toulouse-Tonoose!")

On Friday, Floyd walked in a few minutes after 8 and didn't stop singing, playing the piano or making us laugh for two hours.

Except for the dialectic Italian worked into his act, (which only his closest paisans from Paterson understand) Floyd almost never resorts to the gutter language so often used by younger comics. It's a nice clean show full of fun and laughter.

For that, you excuse the tables and the folding chairs and the loud guys at the bar, and the food being what it was - heck it was always hot even though they had to carry it across the walk in the rain on a cold night.

Floyd said the articles I wrote a long time ago meant a lot back then. He said he still has them. But, Floyd didn't seem to believe in the Internet, or blogging. How could he, he's always on the road at the next show, in New York, western Pennsylvania and Ohio, where his favorite audiences are. (Almost makes you wonder how he had six kids. Ha-ha. He's not ALWAYS on the road, now, is he?)

He says he rarely appears in-state. That, of course, is New Jersey's loss. At least Floyd is in the NJ Monthly Hall of Fame. And all the grown ups who watched his TV shows through the years, well, they would love to spend an evening with Floyd. Even if you have to travel to a pool club in Nutley in February. It's worth the trip.

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reservedUncle Floyd guards the lone restroom from 70 adoring fans and the super-fans at the bar

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.