Excited (4-1-11)

I’m so excited!

As March departs and April arrives I feel like I have an itch in my soul. I’m antsy and my energy is way up. I’m excited about life and what wonderful things are around corners and behind doors. So why not elaborate?

Some of the things I am excited about:

-Sabres hockey. With only 5 games left in the season and the playoffs on the line, every game has become huge. I watched the Rangers game Wednesday night at Goodbar and it almost felt like a playoff game there. Most of the time I’m watching games at Caffe Aroma but I’ll watch them anywhere, especially if friends come out. Tomorrow and Sunday night I’m planning to watch both at Aroma but I can be persuaded to go anywhere else if asked. But hey, Aroma’s not a bad place to watch the games, except they don’t play the game audio and there usually aren’t too many people there to watch the game.

Also yesterday marked opening day for baseball and I’m thrilled to have my Yankees back. Since there are 162 games in a season I won’t be watching every single one but it’s great to know they are there. Baseball games are great background noise when doing something else and they are great low key things to watch when nothing is on or when I am tired and just want to relax. The Yankees are not favored this year because other big name teams signed and traded for some big names but you can never count out the pinstripes!

Speaking of sports my mind is on my upcoming sports season. There have been years where I’ve played on 2-3 softball teams, a football team and either a kickball or volleyball team but in my old age I’m pulling back, haha! Actually I want to focus more on fitness so I am going to try to run/jog at least 5 days a week. I will still play kickball on Mondays and football on Saturdays. Plus we’ll sprinkle in some yoga from time to time and I won’t say never on joining one more team but for now I am content. Rather than play all the sports I can I want to get myself in the best shape of my life. Wouldn’t it be something to be in better shape in my mid-30’s than I was in my mid 20’s? Well, that’s the goal.

-My Health. I’m excited about trying to be healthier. I’m excited about the prospects of finally being healthy. The past few months haven’t made it easy with the serious ankle problem and now with the bronchitis lingering which has kept me down the past few weeks. On the bright side I feel really good physically with football starting in a week or 2 and kickball in 5 weeks. I just have to get my stamina up if my lungs will allow it.

-Poetry: Monday night is next open mic at Caffe Aroma and I am elated! It was so much fun last time to read my work and the rush and love I felt was incredible. I hope we get more poets than last time and we should because the weather will be better and this will be the 2nd one. I’ve been working on poems and so far I have at least 2 new ones to read there with hopefully another 1 or 2 to add to that by the end of the weekend.

Also poetry related is the coming of Buddy Wakefield to Babeville on April 27th. If you don’t know who he is, Buddy is a dynamic poet who has competed and won national competitions. His style is more poetry slam/performance poetry based so that makes it even cooler to go see him live. I’m definitely going to this so if you want to join me, let me know.

My calendar is filling up fast with things to do, it’s like I’m upping the ante on activities with more going on and more going out. There’s a lot to do and Buffalo like me seems to be coming out of its’ winter hibernation. Great concerts are coming up, fun cultural series are starting back up and my desire to get out and see it all is ramped up by snow free sidewalks and sunshine. I know it isn’t warm all the time yet but you gotta take the good with the bad.

Speaking of when you have to take the good and the bad.

The good: Tonight I am going out to a friend’s art opening as part of First Friday around Allentown and then I’m seeing another friend’s band play their first ever show at Nietzsche’s.

The bad: On Wednesday night my travels took me to Mister Goodbar where I took in their open mic comedy night for the first time. While I saw a few good performers I also happened to see the worst comedian I’ve ever seen. It’s not even close. Now this guy brought a dozen people out to watch him and they were quite enthusiastic but not even their energy could save this guy.

He told jokes that weren’t jokes. He bragged about the size of his manhood on a few occasions. He put down women and called them bitches. He talked of his dream of teaching a black person to dance and he spoke of the ghetto… even though he is white and grew up on the west side. Hey, I grew up on the lower west side. I had friends get killed, saw my share of roaches and did some rather stupid things for stupid reasons but guess what: it was a mostly poor neighborhood. It wasn’t the ghetto. White people need to stop talking about everything ghetto. Your ghetto privileges are over. Where was I? He had the confidence of a seasoned comic but the material of an 8 year old… that wasn’t funny. It was his first time so I was willing to give him a pass but he was the worst comic I’ve ever seen. It was like the Jersey shore showed up at open mic night and thought it was funny.

Actually the more that I think about it, I’m glad I saw him. I didn’t have a “worst comic” in my memory. Now the bar has been set. So maybe it wasn’t all bad after all. In fact I think it’s all good.