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I’m quite honestly surprised that I don’t have more of a headache than I do. Good morning everyone, or afternoon I should say seeing its 12:17ish now as I type this sucker up.

Last night, like any good Jew, I found myself fulfilling one of my duties other than fasting on Yom Kippur and that little thing about 8 days after childbirth. Yup, I’m talking about a Passover Seder. If you’ve ever been to one, you’ll know that it sometimes gets quite dull and you find yourself counting ahead to the next page you get to eat something on, but sometimes if you read it with a political spin, well, it can get quite interesting. You see, I read a passage in it about G-D’s outstretched arm as if it were W speaking about invading Iraq. Ahhh… Religion and politics.

And yes, I know you’re not supposed to talk about those things. But for me? I’m all for it. Matter of fact, the two things I don’t talk about are weight and haircuts. Yup. I’m one of those guys.

So needless to say, the amusing moment of the evening for me was when we had finished dinner (a beautifully cooked lamb by my mother-in-law, with some potatoes, matzoh ball soup, succotash, and asparagus) and the conversation had turned from nutty smelling pee to politics, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law left to prepare dessert plates, my wife headed off to the bathroom, and it left my father-in-law, myself, and Lew (my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, my old friend, and hopefully my future brother-in-law) there discussing McCain, Obama, racism, the economy, and whatever else crossed our paths.

Until dessert came. And at the very second that lemon angel food cake with lemon icing and blackberry dressing came around the corner? In mid-sentence that conversation ended.

I seriously love my family. Politics was taken by the cake.

So to everyone eating matzoh over the course of the next week? I feel your pain. Even if I can’t join you. It wouldn’t exactly do me the best to be eating kosher for Passover when I can barely afford to eat three balanced meals a day. Heck, my average meal? A bowl of ramen and an energy drink.

Yesterday, I picked up my guitar for the first time in a few weeks and played about half an hour. And it was interesting because as much as I used to love doing it, it was just work for me then. I didn’t derive anything from it. I was “going through the motions.” Playing guitar used to be such a release and something I enjoyed beyond everything, and to have it just feel so “blah”? What’s happening to me?

I think, quite honestly, its the stress. Its the atmosphere I was in.

I used it as a study break and I didn’t feel like it really. I had a small tickle for it, but not the urge to pick up that guitar and let it loose. And I’m hoping that when finals and this semester are all over, I’ll have a little less pressure when I’m on the job hunt that it can go back to being that relaxation. Heck, I’m even hoping that when I’ve got that job secured and I’m working after graduation that I can let it be that relaxation that it used to be.

Because, as I was telling a friend last night, there’s no greater release than playing. There’s a feeling that I cannot put into words at all about being on that stage or just being somewhere with a guitar in hands and knowing that what I’m doing isn’t just putting a smile on my face, but I’m impacting those around me. Even if its just barely hearing me through a wall or the next room over, or its someone blasting one of my songs as they’re away from home and hearing the words and feeling not so alone? There’s something to that that’s just plain amazing…

I’m debating heading to campus a little earlier than my class tonight and spending an hour or so at the fountain on campus, seeing I won’t have much longer to do that…

Well folks, while people might have tuned in to find out why I was in Tallahassee this past weekend, I’m not going to indulge that one just yet… Instead, I’d like to share a tale of apartment hunting.

Sarah and I had a great 1,200 sq. ft. apartment that we were living in up till the end of March, but the problem was, the lease expired in the middle of a school term. So with that, we were faced with finding a new place to stay till August when I’d be done with school. Not too bad, when you think about it, but when you add in a few key things, well, it makes it all the harder:

Two people living in one room

Cats allowed/not minded

Close to the campus because I have no car

While that doesn’t sound like a lofty list of demands/issues to take care of, well, it’s definitely plenty. And when we were looking, well, there were a few trends that we noticed occured on a regular basis… I’d like to go over them here because it shows just how much of assholes and stupid people can be.

1) We Have Cats: That means that we’re not getting rid of them. That means that if you don’t want cats or pets, don’t advertise pets allowed. Also, don’t back up on things.
2) Two People Doesn’t Mean…: That we’ll pay twice the rent because we’re sharing half of your space. If there are three people living in one apartment, we’ll pay 2/3rds of the electricity, but if we’re using half the space, we’re only paying half the rent. Yes, I’ve had people want to charge us twice the price because of three people in one place.
3) When We Say Close…: We mean close. Seriously. Don’t offer me something 5-10 miles away that I’m going to have to ride an hour to school on the Orlando bus. And also, when I say I have no car, don’t offer me something that’s not on the bus line, even if it is cheap.
4) And When You Post An Ad…: You need to follow up on it. That means if you’re on Craigslist, check your e-mail. If you’re on Facebook, check your Inbox. If you left your phone number, listen to and respond to your messages. Even if its to tell me that you’re busy, that’s alright. And make it timely, like 24-48 hours. You need to follow through or you’re not getting me in because I’ve tried and its in your hands, buddy.

And that’s where I have the greatest stories…
1) A guy had a 2/2 condo that he was looking for a renter for one of the rooms. The real estate agent himself thought we were a great fit, but when he contacted the condo owner, he didn’t think it was fair to the guy already living there for two people to move into one room. All of this after we already agreed to pay twice the utilities. We weren’t even shown the place. In all honesty? If you’re the owner of a place and someone’s going to pay your mortgage for a few months? In this market? Take it!
2) One guy was going to rent out his room in a 2/2 to us, and we’d have to pay all of the deposits to transfer things into our name, but his lease was through October. With us not needing it past August, it was a bit weird. It got even weirder when he stated that he’d be living on the couch in the living room. So in essence? It’d be 4 people in a 2/2 apartment, and we’d be paying his rent for a few months.
3) One girl replied and everything was perfect, absolutely perfect. I replied to her about her place and I didn’t hear back from her… until two days before our lease expired, a good two weeks after I replied to her. She apologized stating that she doesn’t check Facebook much. That’s sort of sad, seeing I replied not 2 hours after I got her message. Oh well, that’s not as much my loss but her loss.

So all of that said, like I had mentioned late last month, we have moved. Ironically the roommates we have now? They graduated one of my alma mater’s rival high schools c/o 2004. They were freshmen at Hernando High when I graduated Springstead High in 2001. Talk about interesting coincidences…

I’ve been thinking for a while about writing more reviews for this blog, and its something that I’d really like to start doing. But the question is why don’t I just do that? I mean, its easy to really just quickly review something, so why not just do that? The fact of the matter is because of the time I spent working for the UCF Independent? Its just not that simple for me.

Back from 2001 through mid-2004 or so, I was a writer for one of two campus papers before it folded and was bought out by the main paper. And my specialty was writing CD reviews, so I got it quickly down to an art. And when you’re writing reviews, you need to have it all down to a formula, especially when you’ve got two to three albums that you’re working on weekly like I often do nowadays. So what’s my formula?

I start off with a casual listen through of the album as a whole from start-to-finish. I let it sit in the background and then just do what I need to do. If it catches my attention, I’ll let it do that. If it just sleeps in the background? It does that. I just let it pass by and be there. After that, put it aside. Over the next day or so, I’ll not listen to it and see if something’s stuck with me. If I remember any of it, if the riffs or lyrics have caught me. After this day or two passes, I’ll take another listen to it, trying to pay a little more attention to the album. I’ll let another day or two pass, and then after that, I’ll play the album a third time (at least) and start writing the review while I’m listening to the album. I find that when I do it this way, it lets the album grow on me and be a lot more than a precursory glance to the album. If you just listen to it once, or listen to it back-to-back in one day are you really doing it justice? You need to let the music exist with you. Music is not an individual process but part of the biggest picture of life and expression. If you just take it as music and entertainment? Fine. But really if you let it live with you, you get so much more from it.

And that’s why when I reviewed She & Him and Joe Hedge’s albums? I feel like I did a crappy job. When I did the album reviews, I had only heard both of those albums only one time. I felt like I didn’t give them that chance to really grow on me, but in my quest for content to fill on those days? I felt strong enough to write up more of a “commentary” on the album. I wish I could feel better about them, and maybe eventually I’ll write a “part two” to the reviews, but still. The originals stand as they are, and I just hope that they were enough to give my inital opinion…

My wife and I have taken an affinity to a new show we found called Torchwood. When the first season debuted on TV, we watched it non-stop. DVRed every episode, and watched it as soon as we could. Beautifully written British sci-fi.

And then, as the first series drew to a close, there was a Doctor Who reference… And I sort of knew that Torchwood was connected. I mean, afterall, Captain Jack Harkness was a character that had roots in Doctor Who. And then at the end of series one of Torchwood? Jack leaves with the Doctor. Oh sure, he comes back for the first episode of series two, but still…

The thing is, the more I read on Wikis and other sites, the more I get drawn in. And that’s not the half of it…

So after a brief stint of a character named Martha being over on Torchwood and her being a very likeable individual, Sarah and I got interested and decided to watch an episode of Doctor Who. We were lucky enough to catch “Blink,” and did one of those “Holy shit” double-takes on the episode. Although, according to most ratings, its one of the better episodes of the series as a whole. Even still, it was enough to make us want to watch it.

But there, sort of lies the problem. You see, we can start watching this new series from 2005, but in actuality, we’re coming in on the “end of something bigger than that.” Because of the way Doctor Who has evolved, this series is sort of only a continuation of the other 9 series/actors to play Doctor Who.

And look at me, thinking we finally got in at a good point. Even still, its a show we’ve added to our “must watch” list… And to give you an idea how indepth it is and the connections of the shows are? You can start googling one thing for the show and end up on Wikipedia, and the whole half hour plus that I’ve been writing this entry? I’ve been flipping between about 10-20 different articles. Its just that well tied in. Beautifully done.

When we were moving and packing up all of the boxes, I found something that I remember I used to have hanging on the wall near my computer. It was some caligraphy that an ex-girlfriend of mine made for me for a monthly anniversary. Sure, usually when you break up you throw everything away or box it away, but long after hers and my breakup, I kept it on my wall and subsequentially hung it on future walls. But Allison was an artist, and still is, and I have a lot of respect for her and her work.

Anyways, I kept it because it wasn’t just random caligraphy, it was a quote that I could be heard often saying, and I had forgotten it.

While I boxed it back up, the words I used to say stuck with me all over again…

“There are two kinds of people in this world -
Those who continue to search for themselves as they grow and change,
and those who give up and become the mask they wear…
…keep searching…“

I gave up for a while, I think. I know. And its time that I throw away that mask and start searching again…

I know I only barely covered this sucker yesterday, but with how I felt this morning and how I feel now? It’s only fitting to cover it again…

In the span of the last 24 or so hours, I’ve had that whole Jones Energy 4-pack that I talked about. Add to that two RockStar Juiced energy drinks, a sugar-free Amp Tall-Boy, and a RockStar Mocha energy drink this morning… While that might seem like a lot, I’ve constantly been one who drinks a large amount of caffeine with no real effect. In high school and other times growing up, I was the guy who’d have a whole pot of coffee with my breakfast and a large homemade latte for my lunch. A diet coke or two into that equation and I was golden.

And for me with caffeine? You really don’t notice much of an effect with me. Or, I like to hope you don’t. On Thursdays, I feel sorry for my evening group because I have so much caffeine earlier in the day that when it rolls time later for class? I’m more sardonic and more of an asshole than ever. Its not my fault, its the caffeine withdrawal.

Even still, this morning before I had the RockStar Mocha, I needed to drink as much water as I could. I could tell I was dehydrated from all of the extra caffeine in my system. As I get older, I have to deal with that more and more. Sad sad side effect…

I’m still feeling a little caffinated and out of it. Its a long slow road back to me, and I’m working on it… I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning and feel a little better… I can only hope… Thankfully when I’m done with some homework tonight? I’ll be good to go…

Ever buy one of the tall boy cans of this or that energy drink and read the back label where it says “Don’t consumer more than 3 cans a day, not for people who are sensitive to caffeine” ?

Last night, I picked up a 4 pack of Jones Energy when I was at Wal*Mart where I used to work. Usually, I’ll pick up the Steven Segal Energy Drinks or the Rip It ones, just because they’re a buck each. If I’m going to drink something with caffeine in it, I don’t want to spend $2-3 a can, I’ll spend only a buck a can and that’s that. Why? What’s the point. You don’t get much more caffeine or flavor for the other ones. And most of them have the same amount of caffeine in them. And speaking of that, the Rip Its have 200mg of caffeine per can. As much as a NoDoze.

So I’m sitting here and reading the Jones Energy drink and it says to not drink more than 2 of them a day. So I’m thinking that it probably has a good amount of caffeine in it, seeing the RockStars say limit yourself to 3 and they have 160mg of caffeine roughly. And me? I’ve had 5-6 Rip Its in the span of about 9 hours, so I know how they work. But then again, my Thursdays consist of grabbing a Tall Boy then later having a large coffee with a double shot of espresso in it, so caffeine is caffeine to me. Boosts me to normal for a bit, then I crash hard and become a cynical asshole. Not that I’m not already halfway there, but it just adds to it a bit.

I researched it online and what do I find? One 16oz can of Jones Energy has only 100mg of caffeine. Only half of what I’m used to having in a Rip It, and about 2/3rds of every other energy drink on the market. And they tell you to only drink 2 a day?

Yeah, if I drink three, its really going to affect me that much… About the same as drinking 2 RockStars, I imagine.

That’s why I’m on the third one of my 4 pack now, and I’ll have finished the 4th one before 24 hours have passed. This is like the old days of writing papers: an energy drink and a bowl of ramen. Can’t beat that in my world…

Well folks, this weekend is a bit different of a weekend when it comes to me pre-drafting. As you read this, I’ll be really grumbling over boxes and all of Sarah’s and my worldly possessions, and be somewhere in the process of our first move together. While you might be able to count our first move together as being a year ago when we moved into this apartment? That was more along the lines of two people moving into a place, not moving together.

This time around, its about US and not a HIM and HER. There’s a bit of a different dynamic when you do that. Sarah’s moved each year since when she graduated in 2005. Me? Since 2002, this is only my third move. I lived on campus from 2002 through 2004, then from April 2004 through till March 2007 off campus in Pegasus Landing, and then from then on out in GrandeVille at River Place. Needless to say, it’s not easy. It means two people assigning different values to various things that we’re both not wanting to get rid of, etc. So far, we’ve been good on the packing. Well, Sarah’s been better than I have. I’ve been trying to juggle getting our sublease set, my school work, and then packing coming third.

So as you’re reading this, I’ll be getting to what I hate doing the most. But we’ve already donated three carloads worth of stuff we don’t need to Goodwill, so if you’ve been dying to own a piece of Adam J. Cohen personal memorabilia? In a few weeks you could take me to Goodwill and I’ll tell you what used to be mine. Or, you could just do the easy thing and download some mp3s from my music page. When I’m back with live posts on probably Tuesday? I promise it’ll be good…

I actually got a pretty funny e-mail yesterday. And its one that before even opening it, I thought it was spam, but the second I opened it, I had to laugh.

From: Monique Lapointe
Date: Monday, March 10, 2008 2:45PM
To: adamjcohen(at)gmail(dot)com
Subject: Radio-Canada

Monsieur Cohen,

J’ai cherché à vous joindre en fin de semaine, mais je n’avais pas vos coordonnées.

L’animateur de l’émission du matin de la radio de Radio-Canada dans la grande région de Montréal, Monsieur René Homier-Roy, aurait aimé qu’on fasse une entrevue avec vous à l’occasion de l’intronisation de votre père au Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Auriez-vous la gentillesse de me dire si cette adresse électronique est valide? Si ça ne vous embête pas, pourriez-vous aussi me donner votre numéro de cellulaire?

Un grand merci.

Bien cordialement,

Monique Lapointe
«C’est bien meilleur le matin»
Radio-Canada
Studio : (514) ***-****
Cellulaire : (514) ***-****

Crazy, huh? And one might wonder why the hell would I be getting an e-mail all in french and the only words that are in english are “Rock an d Roll Hall of Fame.” But the second I read those words, I knew why I got the e-mail: Leonard Cohen was inducted yesterday.

I was expecting an e-mail like this? Sort of, you could say. I used to get them all the time. There’s a reason why I go by “Adam J. Cohen” and not just “Adam Cohen.” If you’ve never gone there before, take this second to head over to AdamCohen.com

Okay, you’re back? Good.

Adam Cohen, the other Adam Cohen, is a musician and a son of the well known singer/song-writer/lyricist Leonard Cohen. Because of the fact that I play/release/record music as well, whenever you Google for “Adam Cohen Guitar Music,” I come up quite often. Try other variations like “Adam Cohen Guitar” or “Adam Cohen Music” and you get me and him, sometimes not as high as him and sometimes beating him out.

The fact of the matter is, he and I are both out there, and even though he and I look really nothing alike, I get french e-mails like that from time to time. So I just pop open his MySpace page and shoot him a line with the e-mails as a courtesy to ensure that he gets his messages, seeing I don’t even have his contact information that most of these people want.

I’d like to meet him someday, though, and shake his hand and have a beer and a good laugh, just for all of these times. That would amuse me.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have interesting study habits that I can trace back to my freshman year here at UCF.

Back then amidst my roommate Rob singing Vanessa Carlton like a pirate, he got me hooked on a few things: Good Will Hunting, biscuits and gravy, and having a bowl of Ramen while you study.

Whenever he’d sit down to turn on one of his movies–that I usually had to leave halfway through for class–like Cider House Rules, Toy Story, or The Legend of Bagger Vance, he was usually working on his screenplay called “Adam.” Ironic that he was living with a guy of the same name, but he started it before me. A prelude to meeting me, it was his subconscious setting him up, I’d say. But whenever he sat down to work on his old laptop there, he’d head over to the microwave and pop in a bowl of ramen. It was the all purpose work food.

As I started to work on my papers and assignments, I’d be waiting with a bowl of ramen right after him. He’d have his in, and then mine would go into the microwave. I couldn’t focus for some reason or another without having a bowl of ramen. The aroma of his made me hungry, and it just became that staple for me. Even after he and I weren’t roommates, there was something about sitting down with that warm bowl of ramen that just begged writing and work from me.

Even to this day, I keep a 6 pack of ramen in the closet. Whenever I sit down and things just don’t come out? It’s a nice safety to keep around to know that I’ve got that fuel if I need it.

So, seeing I haven’t had an open response entry in a while and things have been quiet, I’ll ask the question:
What special vices do you have that help you study or focus?

Let’s keep that answer legal, clean, and legit, folks… I’ve already done enough of the cursing in the past few days… Haha! Have a great day and will catch you tomorrow…

Don’t go to Jared. Goob, this is my response to you.

About two years ago around this time, my father-in-law was helping me shop for his daughter’s engagement ring. Well, it was actually in June of 2005, give or take, but even still, that’s beside the point. At this point, Sarah and I had looked around at numerous shops in the mall, which is the worst idea that I could tell you.

So, let’s start at the basics when it comes to buying a diamond. Men, this is a key thing. Do NOT go out on your own and say “That looks pretty, I’m going to get it.” No. No sirree bob. What you need to do, is you need to find out what your woman wants. While you might have that friend who’s ever so right and tells you “Well man, you’re broke. You can’t afford to get her the best thing out there.” Yeah, that’s true, but gentlemen, this is the woman we love. We can afford to do anything we possibly can for her, so why not try to push ourselves that extra limit? When you find out what she wants, don’t take your eyes off of it. And with this, I mean the 4 C’s.

I’m no gemologist, so I won’t go into them, but you can find good articles online. Noteably, I’d recommend this one for information on the cut and this one for the color, carat, and clarity. There used to be a really good one that I was reading a while back that had all of them and was nicely presented, but I removed all of my linkage.

So, when you’re at the mall and you’re looking at all of these shops, they’ll push you these diamonds that are lower down. You’ll be getting somethign that’s an H or I, SI1, .6 carat, excellent cut, for about 2 grand. If you’re the uninformed consumer, a lot of that might sound pretty good. I mean, you only hear about the carats of the diamond when you hear about the celebrity rings, and to have over half a carat, you think that’s great! Fact of the matter is, its far from it.

See, the trick to buying a diamond ring is to get the diamond and the ring parts separately. Find a jeweler friend of your family that you trust, or you can shop around for the separate diamond, and there are actually plenty of internet websites that you can find your diamond on.

This is what leads me to Jared.

One of the many places that my father-in-law and I stopped at in looking for individual diamonds and settings was Jared’s. And the salesman was just that.

When we were looking for a diamond for my wife’s engagement ring, I was glad I had my father-in-law along for the help. He had done this before–obviously, if he’s my wife’s dad, you know?–and also he had done a bit of work with jewelers and custom jewelry in the past. So he knew what to look for. And me? I kept quiet and listened a lot. And at Jared’s, that was useful.

We were looking for a princess cut diamond, perfectly square table (top of the diamond), and at a high quality and colorless, roughly around half a carat. This is the woman I chose to marry, so I didn’t mess around with what I got her. I got her what she wanted. And when we were looking at Jared’s, the employee who was helping us out, he was helping us find these perfect square ones. And he turned to me and he said “In the twenty some-odd years that I’ve been working in the jewelry business, I’ve seen maybe seven perfect square ones. The one you have is beautiful.” Of course, this is a diamond that alone costs about $4,000 that we’re looking at, which was one of the more expensive ones in the case we were in front of. Makes sense that he’d try to make it “special” for us. Then, I looked down in the case, and I started counting. You see, there were some perfect square ones in the case. Five of them, to be exact. I guess he’s only seen two others over the past twenty years? When we were looking online to find diamonds as well, we probably found a good twenty or thirty in various ranges of color and such.

Hmmmm…. Yeah, I don’t think so.

Needless to say, whenever I see any Jared’s commercial or I hear someone talking about them? I immediately end up talking about the one and only time I went there. If the guy went to Jared’s? He wasn’t smart. He wasted his money.

The other day, I picked up another nickname. And interestingly enough, its only the second one that I’ve ever been given other than some variation of my name. And its not even like I’ve been called anything other than Adam or Cohen. Yup, with the middle name of Jacob, I was never called A.J. growing up, if you could believe that one.

That came from a letter left in my family. When I was born, a dear family friend of my grandparents whom we called Aunt Bertha, wrote me a letter. In the letter, it described how my name was important, the meaning of it, and what it stood for and meant, and because of that, I should never go by A.J. I should never have that type of shortening done to what was already a great name. My parents still have that letter.

So growing up in classes, I was always the “Adam C.” when there was more than one adam in a class. Seeing there was an “Adam D.” and an “Adam F.” that I went to school with, quite often I was well used to being the “Adam C.” And I guess it was alright. Sometimes I was just called “Cohen” by my friends. It helped distinguish me there too.

Then in middle school, that all changed.

Around 5th or 6th grade, I met my friend, Dave Hall. The first time I went over to his house, I met his father, James Hall. I was never to call him Mr. Hall, that was his dad’s name, he said. So I called him Jim. And he? He called me Zeke. Where did he get Zeke from? I couldn’t tell you really. In his own words when he first met me? “You look like a Zeke to me!”

Dave would call me Zeke around our friends, around my parents, around anyone and everyone. So whenever I’d introduce myself, I always said “Hi, my name is Adam, but you can call me Zeke. Just don’t call me late to dinner!” It helped me stick in folk’s minds. I wasn’t just another Adam, no, now I was also Zeke.

Zeke is what I used in a lot of my old screennames and e-mail addresses. I would use it as an icebreaker in meeting new people. It just became me, and I guess it was because not only did I look like a Zeke, but I guess I acted enough like a Zeke to be a Zeke. For my 21st birthday, some of my friends got me a shirt that mimiced the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity on campus. It was green with the giant yellow greek letters Zeta Kappa Epsilon. Not only was I Zeke, but now I could wear it in pride.

And with that, it comes to my last nickname. Kotter. I’ve been affectionately called that on the 7M3 message boards the past few weeks before the show and it was sealed in place on Feb 23rd when the band came out to the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme song. I wish I had more on that joke, but I’ve got nothin’. Love the nickname, though. Works well for me. But if I was only as funny as Gabe Kaplan.

Anyways, for a kid who never grew up with a nickname? I think I’m doin’ pretty good right about now…

I used to work an overnight job. From midnight to 8am a few nights a week around my school schedule, I’d be up working in one of the on campus housing communities. They called the job Residence Hall Auxilary Patrol, or RHAP for short. We were the liasons between housing and the students at night so that the Resident Assistants (or RAs) could sleep overnight and only be woken up when there was a severe problem.

That being said, there were many times that I’d be out of work at 8am, to bed by 10am, and up again at 2pm ready to go for the day. Only a 4 hour nap and I’d be golden.

This morning and other subsequent days that I’ve been facing? Not the case.

Last night I crawled into bed just around 3am and when the alarm went off at 7am? While I got up and was decent in getting Sarah out the door for work this morning, while watching my morning TV shows, I fell asleep on the futon a few times.

So what does anyone who falls asleep that much do? Decide to go to campus to get coffee. Logical decision, you know? Or at least I think so.

———————

Side note: The past few days or so, I haven’t had much substance. There’s one issue that comes with writing everyday. When you do that, sometimes you sit down before thinking an entry out. I’ve got a few that I’m working on for other times, and I’m drafting the beginnings of some from my cell phone, actually, and letting them sit up top for me to work on a bit later, but I guarantee I’ll have some good ones coming up soon…

I don’t talk about it much, but a long long time ago, I used to play baseball. Course, I think everyone did when they were still single digits old.

Even still, I loved the sport growing up. I played YMCA league for three different years–Indians, State Farm, Mets–and I didn’t continue afterwards. But I always loved throwing around a baseball and taking a few swings. I played softball one year in intramurals here at UCF, but not much other than that.

I was very much a utility player. I started out in the outfield and was alright, but I really sparkled when they brought me into the infield. Usually rotated between second and short stop, my favorite spot was when they stuck me behind the plate as the catcher. I used to trade spots there with a friend of mine growing up, Matt Watsky if I recall his name right. Needless to say, I wasn’t amazing, but I was pretty good. I batted either third or either fifth or sixth in the order. Never was phenomenal. I kept about a .250 average at the least.

I loved the game, I really did. Then 1994 hit.

For those who don’t remember 1994 was a dark year for baseball with the baseball strike. I was just 11 years old then: I didn’t care about money in the game and what the players were making, I just wanted to watch the game. I lived and loved the game, and to see folks who were playing where I could only hope to be one of these years complaining about money? It completely took the fun out of the game for me.

And today, with the Clemens/McNamee committee hearing on Capitol Hill, I feel just as sickened about the sport. Whether it really happened or not, which I don’t know what to believe from testimony going back and forth, I can tell you that sports in general make me extremely sad. To have something like this so widespread throughout the game with the Mitchell Report? To have players making millions in a season to the point that if they swing a bat and strike out, they’re essentially getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it?

The same goes for my feeling of all sports. I understand that its an industry, but there’s so much money involved with this that it just really makes me sad.

The kids who are the inner city youth, struggling to survive and playing the games to stay off of drugs. The kids who found a stick and a rock and play because its something other than sitting at home with video games. The kids who are kicking around a beat up old soccer ball and using trees for goals… The sport lies with these youth and the game is still there.

But somewhere along the way when it grew up, so many folks focused on the business that the fun isn’t there. Or at least not for me. I don’t see it anymore.

Maybe some year I’ll be lucky enough to work for a company that has a softball team or bowling team. I’d honestly like that more than anything. I may not be the best, but I’ll always bring my heart to it. And if Sarah and I ever have kids? They’ll learn that lesson and hopefully they’ll love the game… and the sport.

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About The Site


Thanks for stopping by, folks! My name is Adam J. Cohen, and I'm a guitarist/songwriter in Champaign, IL, recently relocated from Orlando, FL where I'm a UCF grad. Here, you'll find vignettes on my life, setlists from open mics and reviews, and whatever else crosses my mind. Enjoy!

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