Sunday, March 18, 2012
Sunday, March 18th, 2012: Back to the Personal; Splash Waning; Bowling
Happy Sunday! Today is going to be a beautiful day, with sunny skies and temps in the 60’s. It’s really amazing how weather can affect your mood. I would imagine that people who live in places where it doesn’t get cold, though, wouldn’t ever really experience this euphoria that comes with the change of seasons from winter to spring. It’s a feeling like no other! Now I’ve just got to put my head down, write what I’ve got to write and get out there to enjoy it!
Back to the Personal
As many of my regular readers may have noticed, the blog has changed in recent months from what it used to be. During this time I’ve gotten away from more of the personal side of my life and a little more into music tidbits, interesting items, and of course, my “Songs of the Day.” I know that most blogs should really focus on one specific thing in order to be really successful, but I can’t help it, I’m not a single-minded type of guy. I have many different interests and I like to spread myself around, so to speak.
With that said, I have tried to stay a little bit more away from the personal side of stuff, but I’ll not abandon it completely. I call this blog “John’s World,” because that’s exactly what it is: my world. I think that in their entirety my posts give people a sense of who I am as a person and who knows, maybe this will end up being my legacy.
So from time to time, like now, I’m still going to pen some personal memoirs…I know that there are some out there that enjoy reading my trials and tribulations, no matter how sappy or trivial. They’ve not stopped, so neither will my talking about them. It just won’t be as often as in the past…
The new XL nightclub is giving Splash a run for its money!
Splash Waning
For the first time in a long time, I went to Splash on a Saturday night. It was a last minute decision, because I went bowling last night and got a late start out of my house so I wasn’t sure whether or not I would make it by 12 (that’s when the price doubles!). I had originally wanted to go to the new XL, which I haven’t tried yet, but since I got out of my house late, I just opted for my usual standby. XL is undoubtedly the hot spot these days in NYC, and I can tell from both the photos they put on Facebook and the size of the crowds at Splash.
For the past several weeks, Splash has been undergoing a renovation, presumably to try and win back some of the clientele it has certainly lost to the newer and supposedly larger midtown nightclub. The place is somewhat of a mess, with the whole front section of the upstairs being reconstructed. The new bar there is in place and to me it doesn’t look too different from before???
Time will tell whether or not these renovations will make a difference, but for the time being things are definitely not the same. The crowds are much sparser than they once were and last night DJ John Marto was conspicuously absent from his downstairs gig, at least while I was there. It used to be that down there would get just as packed in as upstairs with people who prefer a more pop sound to their dance music, but there was no one dancing to the automated video/dance music.
Needless to say, Splash is still a city club and the place wasn’t empty by any means. The crowd was still much larger than a LI club, and the music was pretty good, too. Unfortunately I made the choice to run up to the Ritz around 1:30, but even that place was packing them in more-so than Splash, as there was a hefty line outside waiting to get in. I figured with such a line it would be way too crowded so I chose not to wait and opted to head home. I should have stayed where I was!
I think that next week is the time to try XL, finally. Stay tuned for that…
XL Nightclub, Facebook
Bowling
I’m not sure if I ever mentioned this before on here, but once a month I bowl in a league. It’s the first such time since I was a kid and I joined as a favor to my friend Reet, whose friend asked her to join. This particular one-Saturday-per-month league is called “Just Friends,” and it is not a serious league by any means. Many of the bowlers kind of stink, and up until recently it really hasn’t been that much fun….key words “until recently.”
The past two times we bowled were a lot of fun! I’m not sure if it’s the company, the beer, or a combination of the two, but I become absolutely giddy when I’m there. I like making jokes and playing around with people. Just last month there was this one lady who was what I like to call a “chucker.” That is, whenever she bowls, the ball flies in the air about half-way down the lane, crashing with a loud thud before moving on towards the pins. No matter how many times she went, every single time up she’d chuck that ball, which I found to be so funny, especially considering her, um, large stature.
Not that I am any better…My form when I bowl is much better than when I was younger, but still a little odd. As a kid, for some crazy reason whenever I bowled my left leg used to kick up high and to the side, lol. I don’t know why that was, but it was. I credit my childhood friend Marc’s dad for helping me rid myself of that embarrassing habit. I remember him on the last day of our league, going up with me every time it was my turn and forcing me to concentrate on not kicking my leg up. Unfortunately, in the years since, I’ve developed another irregular method of bowling: these days I stumble!
Yes, I don’t know if it’s because I take too many steps before I reach the foul line or whether I’m just too excited to be doing what I’m doing, but almost every time I throw the ball, I stumble. Sometimes I even fall forward, having to brace myself from falling completely down.
Last night we bowled against a really fun team, and it was finally somebody else’s turn to make fun of me. They were cheering for us and we were reciprocating, laughing the whole night long and having the best time ever. At the end of the night, one of the ladies came up to me and told me that I had such a “fun” method of bowling, that it was “unique and hysterical.” Well, I’ll never be a serious bowler, and so I guess my bowling style has to fit my giddy personality when I’m at the lanes.
By the way, our team began last night in third place overall. Not bad, huh? And we won two out of the three games we played and maybe next week we’ll inch a little closer to first. Ya never know!
Well that’s all she wrote, for now! Time to get out there and enjoy this beautiful gorgeous day…enjoy!
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