If you were too slow or just too plain apathetic to score tickets to the “Winter Classic” hockey game between the Sabres and the Penguins this New Year’s Day, you’re not too late to be a part of the action. The Winter Classic House Party at HSBC Arena gives you a chance to feed off the energy of fellow hockey fans while viewing the game on the Jumbotron. Certainly, there are pros and cons to be weighed, so allow us to help you. At the real game: You’ll pay a lot more ($29-203), have a harder time seeing the game (an NHL rink is less than one-third the size of an NFL field) and be exposed to whatever Mother Nature serves up (though you’ll have a much cooler tailgate party and be a part of history, smashing the NHL record for single-game attendance by more than 15,000 fans). At HSBC: You’ll get the chance to see Sabres alumni skate circles around Buffalo’s finest (police and firefighters) in two 30-minute exhibition games and save a heap on parking (it’s $25 per car at Ralph Wilson). But you’ll essentially be watching television on a crappier screen (though it saves you listening to Bob Costas), still be hit up to buy merchandise and still be paying way too much for beer. So on second thought, maybe I won’t see you there. Maybe I’ll be at home, eating a hot pizza and wings, and tipping back a reasonably priced six-pack. Go Sabres!

What would Christmas in Buffalo be without the annual reunion of those great hometown punks the Fems? Although there’s a blue note to this year’s festivities due to the passing of Mark Freeland in June, he’ll be memorialized through video tributes during this year’s event. The show is partly a chance for the late night denizens of Buffalo’s rabid 1980’s underground music scene to come and hang out like they did all those years ago in the dark, blacklit confines of the small club on Franklin Street known as the Continental. For those who missed it the first time around, this will also be a great chance to catch up on what the buzz was all about, with it being an all-ages show. Not only can we hear the band live with all the hilarious stage banter from riveting frontman Bob Weider, but anyone can pick up a copy of the newly released CD, Live at the Continental, which features recordings from previous reunion shows in 1995 and 1996. Jam-packed with fan favorites like “No Fun” “Go to a Party” and “Corn King,” the disc serves as a raw, rockin’ document of one of the most fun and beloved bands to come out of an era that won’t come around again.

The past year has seen Western New York’s first and only all-female, all-volunteer flat track roller derby association rise through an exhilarating but injury-plagued first season, closing with a grueling away game against the rival Steel Town Tank Girls of Hamilton, Ontario. Over the summer the league hosted a boot camp to recruit new skaters, nearly doubling their numbers. This group of roughly 70 women (read “70 rough women”) includes four teams: the Suicidal Saucies, the Nickel City Knockouts, the Devil Dollies and the newly formed Sub-Zero Sirens. Last season the Suicidal Saucies held off all challengers to scrape an undefeated season, with the Dollies beating them in one period of the final round-robin tournament but losing on overall points. The Knockouts, by an equally narrow margin, went winless for the season, and are hungry for redemption, with 12 new recruits joining eight veterans for the new season. The “New Year’s Bash” kicks off the season with the Devil Dollies vs. Nickel City Knockouts, followed by five more bouts in the next four months to complete their second season. For sports fans who may be getting a bit discouraged this season, the roller derby is a sure bet that the hometown team wins. For a full schedule, see www.qcrg.net.

Maybe it’s true that time heals all wounds. After his death in July 2006, Syd Barrett’s sister insisted Syd had never been really crazy—or, at any rate, that he had not suffered any symptoms of or been treated for mental illness since the 1980s, and prior to that had merely spent some time in a private “home for lost souls.” The girlfriend he beat over the head with a mandolin shortly before the other members of that little band he founded, Pink Floyd, approached a psychiatrist for advice on how to address the “Barrett problem,” might also have the distance now to laugh off his psychoses. Certainly the friends who locked Barrett in a linen closet during a particularly bad acid trip have been joking about it for years. His sister said of those who tried to pull Barrett out of his isolation, which began in 1968 after just three brilliant, weird years with Floyd, “He knew what they wanted but he wasn’t willing to give it to them.” Dave Gutierrez of the Irving Klaws, on the other hand, has been organizing just what Buffalo Floyd fans have wanted for six years now: a night-long tribute to the sad, mad, gorgeous genius of Syd Barrett.