It was sunny, blue skies were all around me with the slightest wisps of clouds, and I could even tolerate the wind today. Class went a lot quicker than I had planned, and for my Russian film class, I managed to put quite a bit of input into the discussion (nothing to do with the fact that at the time, there were only three other people in the room and my professor was urging me to go on the entire time). 
Dinner was absolutely amazing, too. Italian night always is, with their special foods they only let us taste every once in a blue moon. I had a mushroom calzone finished off with tiramisu (I don't care about what Lauren and Danielle say. I think it's amazing even if it's not authentic).
But dinner is not what made my day so good. Neither is the weather or the class situations. It mostly revolves around my night, which was spent in the Ballroom of the Campus Center of the SUNY Albany campus.
My friend Lauren had been telling us all about this amazing comedian named Jim Norton, and I, not knowing who in the world he was, kept blowing it off, because stand up comedy has never been a strong interest of mine. After a lot of convincing, I finally headed over to the Copies Plus center to buy my ticket, and even then, it still wasn't this thing I was excited about.
I wasn't really excited about it really, until today, because we usually have nothing to do on Thursday nights, and I'm always up for discovering new things, especially big acts that the college brings to us (last year, they brought Sue Johanson, the infamous host of "Talk Sex with Sue Johanson" and we literally were put into another room because of the crowd that had come) and with the disappointment of Parkfest (at least for my friends and I) coming up, it couldn't really be any worse.
When I got there, a fairly large crowd was lurking in the stairwell and on the ground floor, managing to outrun the humongous amount of people who were coming in behind me (how I did it, I will never know). We even got second row seats, which has never happened to us before. Everything else we've seen has been from the back of the room practically. A photographer came by to take our picture, mostly because Danielle had seen him and screamed, "Us next!", but he was taking pictures of everyone in the front anyway, so maybe in the upcoming days, you can see us on the Times Union website.
The first act, Erick James, was really funny. He instantly tuned in with everyone and made the entire room shake with laughter. I felt kind of bad when he announced Jim Norton and the entire room clapped and yelled, because he really did not get that kind of attention when he first walked on stage.
But I have to say, Jim Norton was definitely amazing. He has this weird twitch in his eye, that you can notice as soon as you see his face, and he walks kind of funny. But, he uses that to his advantage and when he makes certain expressions, it's priceless. I
personally loved when he talked about the tiger at the San Francisco zoo. I guess it appealed to me because I've been there, and I've actually seen the other tigers there (and the huge gap
that the tiger jumped over, which is SO big. It's crazy to think that something jumped across it) and I hate the fact that stupid kids ended up making it happen. I know I should value human lives more than tiger lives,
but I'm pretty sure that tiger was on an endangered species list, and having it killed bothered me a lot.
Anyway, I could go on and on about the jokes he told and the reactions he got, but in all reality, it's hard to capture the magic that was on that stage tonight.
(Jim Norton is the one sitting, Erick James is up above, just the headshot)
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