The most-watched TV series on the planet — which is wrapping up a record-breaking eight-year run — isn’t really about dragons, knights or wights in George R.R. Martin’s fictional Westeros, which itself is loosely based on England’s “War of the Roses.”

Given that, not surprisingly, it’s really all about politics: family dynasties, secretive back-room bargaining and backstabbing as well as plenty of revenge served up with ice and fire.

As we dive into the last epic season of GOT, can local fans of the record-breaking series — which hasn’t aired new episodes in almost two years — find insights and parallels between Niagara County’s 2019 political scene and [...]

As “Citizen Kane” played in one of Buffalo’s lost movie palaces, North Tonawanda resident John Lukasik sat in the audience as Orson Welles made cinematic history. That is, until the lights abruptly flashed on that Sunday afternoon on December 7th, 1941, and an even larger history wrote itself.

 “I remember thinking, ‘Where was Pearl Harbor?”

That Monday an 18-year-old John and a buddy went to a Marine recruiting station to sign up — out of anger at the sneak attack — and because “the Marines had a really nice dress uniform,” Lukasik said. His buddy got in, but John got rejected. Too many fillings in his teeth …

It would take another two years [...]