Off Main Street: The offbeat side of the news
Published: October 03, 2009, 12:30 am
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Workout buddies
In an emergency, what’s better than a LifeCall medic-alert bracelet? Two future governors.
At a Capitol event on Thursday honoring former Gov. George E. Pataki, current Gov. David A. Paterson recalled working out one day years ago in a legislative gym with Pataki when they both served in the Legislature.
“We were there with a state senator named Bill Stachowski,” Paterson said of the Lake View Democrat. “And Stachowski always prided himself as the legislature’s best athlete, and so he’s trying to bench press like 900 pounds or something.” The weight slipped, Stachowski screamed for help, and Paterson and Pataki ran to his aid.
But in a glimpse of Pataki’s “incredible political acumen,” Paterson joked, the former GOP governor, before helping the Democratic senator, checked voter enrollment data to “see if the Republicans could win the district.”
Pataki, speaking next, recalled the incident. But he said he already knew the GOP couldn’t win Stachowski’s district.
“I thought about it for a minute, but being a humanitarian, Gov. Paterson and I go running over to lift the weight. And I recognized immediately that Gov. Paterson couldn’t see what’s going on,” he said of the legally blind Paterson. “He’ll have no idea if I’m helping him or not.
“So, governor, I’ve kept it a secret all this time, but I just pretended you lifted all that weight.”
Fancy meeting you here
Calculation or coincidence? Whatever the motivation, Erie County Executive Chris Collins found himself deep in enemy territory Wednesday and relishing the experience.
On the same day New York’s top Democrats gathered at the Buffalo Hyatt Regency, Collins was just one floor away, holding a news conference announcing the Hyatt’s designation as a “green” hotel. Not surprisingly, the event garnered Collins, a potential Republican candidate for governor, more than a little attention from the out-of-town media.
“That’s just totally coincidental,” he told the New York Daily News. “I didn’t even know they were doing this here.”
They might be Giants
A letter from an aggrieved Buffalo Bills fan in Central New York generated a flurry of comments on the Post-Standard newspaper’s Web site this week.
Alexander S. Bauer, who lives in the Syracuse suburb of Baldwinsville, complained that a local network affiliate aired a game involving the New York Giants instead of a Bills game.
He noted Syracuse is 100 miles closer to Buffalo than it is to the Giants’ East Rutherford, N. J., home.
“Fox General Manager Aaron Olander needs a geography lesson, and to stop letting his apparent Giants bias get in the way of his job. This is a Buffalo market,” sniffed Bauer.
The letter had sparked 135 online responses as of Friday morning.
“I haven’t met a Bills fan yet—what do they look like?” said a Giants backer.
But we liked this fan’s take: “The Bills lost this weekend because their power comes from the hopes and dreams of their fans. Without our ability to watch the game on television, all hope is lost!”
Loony ’toons
University at Buffalo graduate and former Buffalo News editorial cartoonist Tom Toles has received a compliment: His work was cited on “Family Guy.”
In Sunday’s show, characters Brian, a cerebral talking dog, and Stewie, an evil talking baby, land inside an editorial cartoon from the Washington Post, where Toles now toils.
“Here comes an overweight cat with dollar signs for eyes and a hat that says ‘Social Security’ pouring a bucket that says ‘alternative minimum tax’ over a sad Statue of Liberty holding a ‘democracy’ umbrella,” Stewie says in the cartoon.
This prompts guffaws from Brian before Stewie cuts him off with a vulgarism. Toles replied on a Post blog.
“On Sunday, Fox cartoon show Family Guy imagined a universe in which everything is depicted as a Post political cartoon: I couldn’t understand it because the characters weren’t labeled,” he quipped.
Written by Stephen T. Watson with contributions from Tom Precious and Phil Fairbanks. offmain@buffnews.com
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