By Aaron Besecker

Copyright buffalonews

The jury has reached a vermin

As prosecutors and defense attorneys waited to start a murder trial Monday morning, the quiet of the mostly empty courtroom vanished when something crawling on the floor drew the attention of Assistant Erie County District Attorney Rebecca Shnirel.

A blitz attack with the sole of her shoe – and the repeated slapping noises as it hit the rug – momentarily broke the calm inside the basement courtroom in the Erie County Court building.

What was it that ended up squished, a voice in the courtroom asked.

Something “gross,” Schnirel replied.

The attorneys were seated at separate tables about to argue pretrial motions in the murder trial against Brian Scott Lorenz, who is accused of the 1993 slaying of Deborah Meindl.

The large basement courtroom served as home for the jury selection process, which began Monday afternoon and ended Thursday morning. The rest of the trial is being held in State Supreme Court Justice Paul Wojtaszek’s regular courtroom on the second floor of the courthouse, where all the pretrial appearances were held.

After Schnirel cleared the courtroom of the unspecified, many-legged pest, someone in the gallery sought a venue change.

They wanted to go back up to “the clean courtroom.”

– Aaron Besecker

Snow? What snow?

Visit Buffalo, formerly Visit Buffalo Niagara, recently launched its first national marketing campaign for the region.

The campaign narrative is “Buffalo doesn’t fit in a box,” Patrick Kaler, the tourism agency’s president and CEO, told The Buffalo News this month.

The campaign leans into some seeming contradictions about the city with phrases like “No-fuss fancy,” “Refreshingly spicy” and “Polished grit.”

This caught the attention of someone at NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”

Meyers poked some fun during his monologue Tuesday night.

“And finally, tourism officials in Buffalo have launched a new marketing campaign, including posters with a picture of the city and the phrase ‘polished grit,’” Meyers quipped, “replacing their previous slogan, ‘uninhabitable eight months a year.’”

At that, a photo showing downtown Buffalo in its nighttime glory was replaced by a generic snowy scene.

Jokes about snow in Buffalo. How original. What’s next, riffing on the heat in Phoenix, or the rain in Seattle?

As far as tourism messaging goes, though, it reminds us of the blowback the organization received in 2011 when it unveiled the slogan “Buffalo For Real.” (Yes, really.)

We asked Visit Buffalo officials what they thought of Meyers’ dig. If nothing else, it’s free publicity, right?

“Oh, snow you didn’t, Seth!” the agency responded. “Our new campaign certainly snowballed quickly. We’re thrilled the country is buzzing about Buffalo.”

– Stephen T. Watson

We lost to Calgary?!

What do New York City, Las Vegas, Toronto, Columbus, Ohio, and Calgary, Alberta, all have in common?

They all rank ahead of Buffalo in a dubious new rating of the “Best North American Cities for Chicken Wings.”

Buffalo ranked 12th on the list compiled by betway.com, a casino and betting website.

It’s hard to imagine a city that serves up better wings than Buffalo, the place where wings were invented, where a hugely successful Wing Festival is held every year and where people wear chicken wing hats to NFL football games.

Betway says its rankings are based on each city’s numbers of wing restaurants, especially those that are “top-rated,” and other factors, including social media posts about wings and internet searches about wings.

Drew Cerza, founder and organizer of the National Buffalo Wing Festival, called the study “mind-boggling.” He said nobody in the wing world comes close to Buffalo.

“We had people come to our latest event from 47 states and 37 countries. Wings are part of the fabric of our community,” Cerza said after reading the study. “A study like this just fires up our passions and our competitive instincts.”

To us, it sounds like a list compiled by someone who drinks prune juice with their mild wings and douses them with ketchup and ranch dressing.

– Dan Herbeck