The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

SURVIVOR BUFFALO 2005 - BEAST MAYORAL CONTEST

ATTENTION BEAST READERS! The BEAST needs you to be the next Mayor of our dear city. That's right! We want you, a lowly loyal BEAST reader, to be the next Mayor of the city of Buffalo. WE ARE TOTALLY SERIOUS! We are launching a search for 16 contestants willing to run for the position of Mayor in 2005. The contestants chosen will compete against each other in a contest similar to a cross between The Apprentice, Survivor, and Fear Factor all rolled into one.

QUALIFICATIONS:
1. Be a registered Democrat. Hey, Buffalo's a Democratic town, and when in Rome, well you know.
2. You must be willing to actually run and serve as Mayor if elected. Once the BEAST candidate is chosen, the BEAST and our army of volunteers will do everything that we can possibly get away with to get you elected.

Why now, you ask? We're sick of the Presidential race. Bush is probably going to win, and we're going to have four more years of Orwellian misery-and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Or is there? They say all politics are local, and we at The BEAST think that the only way to ensure our future is to start taking back our own turf, and we're starting with Buffalo. Hell, it's Buffalo; nobody wants it anyway. And you know the politicians are going to run some schmuck, so we thought it was time that an actual person get chosen to run in a truly democratic fashion-Reality Journalism.

The 16 contestants will face off in 15 different challenges documented by The Beast, and we will eliminate the worst contestant after each challenge. Some of the challenges we are considering:

1. It is said that when you are in Politics you are swimming with the sharks. We'd like to have our politicians swim in shark tank and see who lasts the longest but we wouldn't do that to defenseless sharks. Our candidate needs to show that that he/she can swim with the political sharks so we will send them into volunteer to work for a politician and return with the most scathing item or information they can obtain about that politician.

2. We believe that the ability to function while your ability is impaired by alcohol and drugs is a must for any politician. We will have the contestants ingest vast quantities of alcohol and drugs and they perform tests of skill to prove their ability to function while inebriated.

3. Any politician that doesn't want to lose the very next election must be able to ignore the putrid state of our environment or risk incurring the wrath of his/her corporate benefactors. The lakes and waterways in Buffalo are disgustingly polluted and the fish are unsafe to eat. The contestants will engage in a polluted fish eating contest.

4. Cigarettes are pretty much banned in all public places in NYS, but herbal cigarettes are not. We will have our contestants go to public event and smoke as many herbal cigarettes they can until they are thrown out or arrested.

5. A good politician knows how to do things on the sly. Buffalo shares a border with Canada and after 9/11 the borders have tightened security in fear of terrorists. We will see how many times our contestants can get back and fourth over the US/Canada border while transporting a large brick of contraband and not getting caught.

6. You need to be able to sling mud in politics so we'll have our contestants during a one week period seek out public figurers at public events and loudly hurl insults at them until thrown out of the event. The most insults wins.

7. In politics the Media is everything, we will see what contestant can get mentioned in the media on his own the most by pulling off any stunt possible in a 2 week period.

8. In keeping with the type of persuasion they'll need to convince Buffalo to elect them, Contestants will visit a cancer hospice and convince a real terminal patient that they are going to be just fine, thanks to a new miracle cure.

9. Contestants will drive recklessly in an attempt to incur a ticket for a traffic violation. Once charged, they will be required to get out of it somehow, either by fighting in court or through back channels.

10. Contestants will be sent blindfolded to run errands on Bailey Avenue, to demonstrate a longstanding Mayoral requirement in Buffalo: being able to do their job without ever actually seeing a black person.

These are just a few of the examples of what we plan to do through out this contest. The contest will span throughout 15 issues of The Beast. The remaining contestant will be The Beast endorsed candidate for mayor. That person will then undertake an official campaign aided by The Beast to actually win the Democratic Primary and then the November 2005 election. The Beast candidate will then take office and Buffalo will rise again to prominence guided by the loyal Beast readers.

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MA YORAL SURVIVOR: A BEAST CONTEST

ATTENTION BEAST READERS! The BEAST needs you to be the next Mayor of our dear city. That's right! We want you, a lowly loyal BEAST reader, to be the next Mayor of the city of Buffalo. WE ARE TOTALLY SERIOUS! We are launching a search for 16 contestants willing to run for the position of Mayor in 2005...

Truth is Overrated Al Uthman

It's been almost a week since the second Presidential debate, and I'm still baffled at the post-debate coverage.

Well, no, that's not really true. I remember turning to a fellow viewer as we watched Bush go to pieces and saying, "watch; they're gonna come on and call it for Bush."

Political Snicker-ing Matt Taibbi

The good folks at M&M/Mars and BBDO New York have combined recently to give the world one of the more uplifting cinema experiences of the year: a series of commercials in which hapless, ambitionless zeroes with terrible haircuts make improbable journeys from their couches to the throne of mankind after eating Snickers bars.

Big Brother Knows Best Paco Alameda

True story: After eagerly awaiting the DVD release of Fahrenheit 9/11, I take a bus to The Hamburg, NY Blockbuster and ask the first friendly clerk I see to point me toward the new releases. He walks me over to the Fahrenheit 9/11 display and being a very helpful chap, takes a DVD, hands it to me and says "Is this what you were looking for?"

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