This boy is home.

Friends, family, and lovers. On several occasions now, I would be hapless and homeless without your support. You all have given me places to call home in this life. Thank You.

This boy is @ a Semi-Random Family Home in Cheektowaga: Bills Adventure Week 3

Score: Saints 27, Bills 7

This week, Michele and I were invited to a friend-dinner at Kelsey's home in Cheektowaga. We, or rather I, watched the game on the kitchen TV (that's right, a television in the kitchen!) as we chatted and prepared tasty foods. Reluctantly for me, the Bills weren't the only thing served up on a plate that evening! She knows next to nothing about football, but Kelsey's home cookin' scored a touchdown in my playbook. Cheesy.

I feel the need to mention that the dessert was especially delicious and consisted of homemade cookies, Kugle, and a Bill's Turnover.... Okay okay, too much? I'll stop. But only because I can't think of any good puns for that fantastic fake field goal attempt turned touchdown. It was almost as good as the Kugle.

That's it, really. After dinner and the humiliating loss we piled onto the couch with full bellies, watched Serenity, and shared in a many hearty laughs. Fun was had by all and if there's anything that I learned from this experience it's that my beloved Bills are merely a sweet & sour side-dish to the main course of good times topped with a heaping pile of good friends.

Next Up: Fish is on the menu! Tune in as Tim will be watching the Bills hunt the Dolphins from a submarine!

This boy is @ the Caffe Aroma: Bills Adventure Week 1 & 2

Stolen Arts from Lesliezart.com, look it's me with Bruce front and center. Weird.

Why the hell go to a coffee shop to watch the Bills? Why the hell not! Sports bars are boring.

I'm pretty sure I cleared this up in the first post, but in case you didn't catch wind, there is nothing is more repulsive to me than bro's and jocks yelling FOOTBALL or BEEER or GO COWBOYS. Yes, I'll visit said jocks at some bar some weekend in this sixteen week adventure, feigning the man's man talk of sports and audible grunts, but I'd prefer to put it off for a bit. As you'll read, even at a coffee shop I still saw a fight with cops called in!

At the moment, my current financial condition doesn't allow me the pleasure of ordering multiple deliciously overpriced Cold Ones anyway. So to start, I picked the Elmwood Village's trendy Caffe Aroma, on the corner of Elmwood Ave and Bidwell Ave, for their cheap re-fillable coffees, their completely random flat-screen television, and free wifi to browse job listings during commercials and half-time.

I have to admit, I was a little worried that as I biked Bruce up to Caffe Aroma, I would peer through the window and find the coffee shop tuned into some artsy tv instead of ESPN. But wait, no matter how trendy or hip, this is Buffalo. Sure enough, Bills on TV... and winning 7-0! No way, what luck!

I ordered a cup of coffee, settled into a chair, opened my powerbook, and watched as the Bills went on to heartbreakingly lose in the last few minutes of a game they had all but won against a division rival they haven't beaten since 2003! Candor friend Dan said it best in this tweet:

dflynnblake: Wow bills. You out-billsed Yourself tonight. Holy crap.

10:14 PM Sep 14th from txt

For shame Bills, for shame.

Anyway, horrible loss aside, Caffe Aroma was a delightful little place to see a football game. Sure, the staff wasn't too thrilled with sports on the tv. In fact, during the Bucs game they were a lot a bit vocal about that. Too bad for them, this is Buffalo. Where else can you publicly watch T.O. pop popcorn and listen to Regina Spektor bip bopping her way through an album? Plus wifi access for fantasy updates and checking fashion blogs! With this special cross-section of fans, who could resist a bit of people-watching?

At that first Monday night game, I counted at least four other introverts watching the game out of the eight or so patrons. Most notably, a man in his mid-40's who just couldn't stay in a book (that he was just dying to read) because he couldn't pull himself away from the game. During the Bucs game there were triple the amount of fans. As I was unlocking Bruce outside afterward I saw another fan (a girl-fan!) exit the coffee shop with the grit to don a complete fan-outfit with Bills t-shirt and hat just like me! Props girl, props.

Of course, there's a certain sadness to the situation. We the introverts without tv wanting to watch our Bills while our sports-hating friends are off doing non-football-Sunday-afternoon things. All the while, we're too afraid or just completely uninterested in mixing with the guys packed into the bar across the street. So we take our refuge in the comfort of a nice quiet... "STOP BEIN' RACIS'! STOP BEIN' RACIS'!" What the fuck? Everyone gets really quiet and turns toward the commotion coming from the counter. There's some guy from the psychiatric ward (just a few blocks away) yelling and throwing his empty coffee cup at the poor barrista. She phones the police as an extremely tall, extremely weird, and extremely friendly indian man escorts said yelling crazy man out of the caffe. Random. Yes. I saw an assault during a Bills game that was completely non-sports related. I don't believe for a second she was being racist, but I do believe she was being a complete bitch to a man with a visible mental disability.

Aside from random assault, things stayed pretty quiet. In fact, staying quiet in itself presented a problem. I suggest fans with sports anger issues to try watching a game at any coffee shop. A single angry peep and you'll be asked to leave. All the same, fans ever so slightly raised excited hands during Aaron Schobel's miraculous TD interception, while quietly pounding fists into coffee tables as McKelvin lost the game with his fumbled kick return. I personally kept a "I Want Nothing More Than to Scream Loudly at a Dumb TV" score for myself. Basically, how it worked is I took a tally for every time I quieted myself from yelling. Score from the Patriots game:

5 "YEAH"s and "ALRIGHT"s

3 very very angry "GODDAMMIT"s and "MOTHERFUCKER"s (sorry mom)

For the record, I angrily threw my pen at my table then audibly swore when McKelvin fumbled on the kick return. During the Bucs game, my notes show only two "I Want Nothing More Than to Scream Loudly at a Dumb TV" instances; quite possibly because the Bills won handily against a poor NFC South team.

Next up: Bills vs Saints randomly at a Dinner Night with Michele and Kelsey (neither of whom like football) at Kelsey's Family's House (whose mom loves football) in Cheektowaga!

This boy is going on a Buffalo Bills adventure...

My first Bills post. I'm undertaking a new Buffalo-adventure involving my beloved Bills. But first, a personal history:

My first introduction to football was Superbowl XXVI: Redskins vs. Bills. Back in that day, I flipped a coin and decided to root for the Redskins! Heresy you say?! Why yes. Yes it was.

(In fact, heresy on an even greater level, as I have decidedly come out against the use of Indians/Redskins/Chiefs/Braves mascots as the great American dick move toward our ancestors. Even my hometown Candor Indians should be the Candor Cows, reason being the town's largest industry is dairy! Our tournament champion indoor soccer team, Las Vacas del Fuego, had its roots in that idea... but more on those obscurities and American Indian issues another time.)

During the following season, I decided to do a take-back. It was the Third Grade for me, so after watching a lot of football and learning the rules and strategies for real: I decided that the charging Buffalo swoosh was by far the coolest graphic design in the NFL.

No, it wasn't the risque use of the hurry-up offense, or the solid defense that piled up sack after sack, or the fantastic special teams; my love for the Bills started on a purely visual level with that cute little leaping Buffalo. And never mind that if a real buffalo tried to charge, with its front legs parallel and bent, that the poor buffalo would land flat on its buffalo-face! (Or maybe that's the point, after all.) In any case I began cheering for talents like Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, Andre Reed, Steve Tasker, and yes: Steve Christy!

After seasons of constantly injured, traded, and retiring veteran greats; the Bills sunk hard into losing seasons with bad coaches, bad quarterbacks, tired defenses, the dreaded music city miracle (search YouTube if you don't know), followed by no playoffs for a decade (even when all-you-need-to-make-the-playoffs-is-a-win-against-the Stealer's-mediocre-bench-in the-last-game-of-the-year, fail).

Yet I'm still horribly horribly hooked!

I grew up mostly alone in my rela-fan-ship with the Bills. Yes, hometown friends Brad and then a little later Dan were and still are avid Bills fans; but most Sundays were spent watching football on the living room couch at home. Fast forward to now: as destiny would have it, I live in Buffalo! And yet, in the irony of it, very few if not any of my Buffalo friends care about sports or even the Bills. For example, doesn't my fellow photo-art friend Eric look thrilled about the Bills in this photo?

Exactly. And let's face it, most of my friends are also of the strong-independent-woman variety. Oh well.

So of course I'll just tune into CBS every week and watch from the living room couch like those cozy childhood days, right? Nope.

That would be too easy. We don't have an actual television here at my new place. My roommates and I steal the internet from some poor uneducated Wifi-ian, which is great for loading up and watching all the Firefly's, MST3Ks, L Words, Project Runways, and old school Batmans that we love and adore. But unfortunately the interwebs are too slow for those frustrating justin.tv live feeds.

So the plan: venture out into Buffalo!

Each week I have started and continue to plan on watching the game from a different location. Bars, coffee shops, donut shops, storefronts, random Buffalonians' homes, even hospital waiting rooms! To me, it's a win win: there's plenty of sad Buffalo to discover and plenty of sad Bills games to watch! And for your entertainment I'll report back here each week. Suggest a location in the comments and I'll check it out next game! Sound good? Great!

Stay tuned as I catch you up with the first two weeks of Bills vs Patriots and Buccaneers from Caffe Aroma...

This boy is rebooting the blog!

Back to blogging, really. We all know these blog posts. An individual's return to the interwebs promising a grand and eternal return to blogging! They'll post once, twice, maybe three times; but eventually the cogs in their blog-brain get squeaky, seize up, slow to a halt, and go into a blog-coma.

So, am I promising grand and endless blogging? Nope.

BUT I do promise a few overblown adventures in Tim-life: hopefully some artsy stuffs, some personal stuffs, some Summer adventure stuffs, some biking stuffs, some Bills stuffs, and some Buffalo-love stuffs. And if I get a little more managed in my ways you will ultimately enjoy these creativities for some time to come.

In any case, thanks for reading and check out the first real post here!