Thoughts of a Common Man

The calendar is a strange thing isn't it? We normally flip it from one month to another without too much thought, but man, when December is turning to January there are so many plans to be made. It's like we get a clean slate to work with, and there aren't too many among us who believes that it will just be the same old crap. I'm not going to swear once in 2010. I'm going to eat right, drink less, and lose weight. I'm going to be kind to my family, dedicated in my work, and content in the decisions of others. I'm not going to miss mass even once this year. I'm going to help more around the house, change the oil every three thousand miles, and clean up that damn storage room. And then... Three days into it, we may be doing okay. Crossing everything off the to-do-lists, still eating celery, and swearing that our stomach shrunk. And then... "F&*@ it!" we scream knowing that we weren't going to hold it in any longer, and with swearing alrea...

Reading about the alleged terrorist attack and realizing that I've been standing on a slippery slope all year, I have one freaking wish for '10 - I want hope back. That isn't too much to ask for, right? I don't want to continue feeling that everything is crap. I don't want to feel like I can't pray for something (a habit the nuns beat into me) because now it won't come true. I want to be able to think about wanting to write something new that is completely filled with the daydreaming of the past. Writing the non-fiction stuff absolutely blows. Hope - I hope this comes true or that comes to be. I hope that I can dream free of worry. Well if dreams came true, ah wouldn't that be nice. This ain't no dream we're living through tonight. Did you see Bruce on the Kennedy Honors? When they were singing his songs you could almost here him thinking, 'Ah, crap they're screwing it up.' And Melissa Ethridge has been through a lot, but she looked l...

They say that being prejudiced is lumping together one group of people and making assumptions about them as if they were all one in the same. If that's the case, I'm prejudiced. I hate television weathermen and weather women. I think of this today because it took me an hour and a half to travel 18 miles this afternoon. Now, of course, blaming the snow on the weatherman is a little short-sighted, but those unfunny bastards take credit when the sun shines, don't they? Perhaps it's their banter I hate most of all - they pretend that they were behind the sun shining bright and if it does happen to snow or rain then they say - "Well don't blame me! Ha-ha, hee-hee." Yet they also tell me how smart they are when they are tracking a system with all of their sophisticated radar and such - and yet - not one of them saw my drive-time hell coming. Why is that oh wise one? My hatred for weathermen also comes from my troubled youth when my grandmother absolutely had to ...

My kids have snuggies. Isn't that wonderful? Now they can sit around the house assured of their warmth. Not that I'm against them being comfortable, but it is getting a tad ridiculous now, isn't it? You see each morning I'm out of bed nice and early. Yet I have little trouble waking the kids as they are usually camped out in front of ESPN before I even hit the stairs. The problem, of course, is that they have not done much more than stumble from their beds to the couch. The dogs are begging to go out, and be fed. The coffee cup or drink glasses are scattered all around. "We need to get them moving," I tell Kathy. Being that Kathy takes a bit of time to get acclimated to a new day, she sort of shrugs me off. And now she bought them freaking snuggies - I'm fighting a losing battle here! But they look comfortable, don't they? It might be something that would make my nightly visits with Judge Judy more enjoyable,wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, Pops, I know - ...

A couple of my nieces on my wife's side got engaged for Christmas. They are certainly reasonable young women with a lot going for them, but it was pretty funny hearing them talk about the future as if they were entering Candyland with sweets falling from the trees. Of course, I was there to help talk their husbands-to-be through the upcoming days. "Do you like dish-pan hands?" I asked one groom to be. He just sort of shrugged. "All the things you used to love are soon to be memories." "Oh no," the clueless bastard explained. "We do our own thing and we respect each other's need to break free every now and then." I couldn't stop laughing. "Have you considered how it will be when you're sleep-depraved, chasing kids around, and cleaning the house ten minutes before the Super Bowl is starting?" "We've talked it all through," he said. "We have a plan to keep everything interesting. We get along great."...

It's so easy to lament what is lost. It's so simple just to chase your tail, and upon catching it realize that there's nothing you wanted to do with it anyway. A couple of years ago my Christmas post was the words - God Gave Me Everything I want - and it sort of haunted me today as the kids ripped away at their presents, hoping that the next one was the one they really wanted. Of course, there were smiles all around, and it does my heart good to know that they're safe, secure and relatively happy. It's our solemn vow that they remain in that frame of mind, but the cloud in our hearts this year can certainly block out the sun on certain days. So...time to count the old blessings, right? A great family - to my beautiful wife and equally beautiful kids - so much to thank each other for - day in and day out - a prayer that its never forgotten - not even in the darkest minutes. Brothers, sisters, mother and father - in-laws, out-laws and dogs as my nieces and nephews. We...

So Christmas '09 is upon us. A year that sucked from the first month and continued to suck all the way, at least personally. Cheetah Woods had a better year than me, my family and most of our friends. Today is the day we Look Up and Cheer Up! As I was writing the story of Jeff over the last few months, I was struck by a memory of a night gone by. We were drinking beer (believe it or not) at my parents home. We had made the evening interesting by betting beers on one thing or another, and there were plenty of laughs with good friends and family. I believe that the gathering was a going away party of sorts for Carrie as she left for law school. Anyhow, the end of the clear summer night found Jeff and I outside doing what needs to be done as beer makes its way through the system. We just happened to arrive at the door at the same time. "Hang on a minute," Jeff said. He sort of spun me around and pointed skyward. All of the stars were out and since it was such a clear night t...

Imagine for a minute how excited you might be if someone finally discovered your beauty and decided to put you in a movie, and another movie after that, and paid you millions, and voted you one of the top 100 sexy people on the planet. You'd be thrilled, right? You'd get to go to all the cool parties, paying the electric bill would be easy, you'd live in a great house with a big pool, eat the greatest food, go to the best bars. Ah,life would be sweet, right? Cut to the end, where you're lying on your bathroom floor at age 32, throwing up, a table full of meds spelling out your last few hours as TMZ scrambles to retrace your last steps. All that life, all that beauty gone. We're all just running through the forest with the wolf nipping at our heels, huh? Thinking about Brittany Murphy and her death it's easy to wonder how such a downward spiral can happen. How do you end up gone at 32 from natural causes? Now it may have been a fluke thing, right? Lord knows th...

Stopped at Wegman's this morning, just about three hours before Bills-Pats was to start. There was a young girl in line in front of me - she was in a Bills Jersey and had the logo painted on each of her cheeks. "Going to the game?" I asked. "Uh, no," she laughed. "I was thinking of renting a movie and sitting around in this garb." Behind me were two young guys with a case of beer. They too wore jerseys and were all fired up. "I can't believe I've had three beers already," one of them said. It dawned on me that they were me about twenty years ago. "Are you going to the game?" the girl asked me. I had a cart filled with bread, eggs, milk, lunch meat and dog bones. I was just trying to chip in around the house. "Nah, I'm too old," I said. "That's a young person's game." "Yeah, but you'll watch it, right?" I do still watch the games despite my obvious disdain with the direction of th...

This is the time of year when kids all over the world suffer through the same things that adults battle every day - waiting for their ship to come in. These five days before Christmas are like those moments when you open the paper to check your Mega Millions ticket. Of course, it usually works out better for the kids because at least they get something at the end of the day. Is it too much to ask to get one freaking number for my five bucks? How in the hell can I get that many numbers and not match even one? There should be a prize for that. Anyhow... The boys were a bit antsy last night. Before long hee-hee and ha-ha were in trouble because they just wouldn't stop. Hee-hee eventually got the message, but ha-ha was still driving us both crazy. As I get older I find myself saying things like - "It's after nine o'clock, we need to settle down." After nine o'clock on a Saturday night is time to settle down? By ten o'clock, not having heard much for a little w...

Mellencamp's Jack and Diane has a line in it that everyone has sung to some degree - Oh Yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone . Great song, good lyric - my favorite part about Jack and Diane though is the follow-up song Eden is Burning where Diane and Jack get a divorce - brilliant that he changed the names around. Anyhow, this isn't a Mellencamp discussion. Yet I used to feel sorry for the narrator singing that line - Oh, yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone . It clashes with my suck it up and tough it out lyric from another Mellencamp song, but over the last few days, I've been sort of wallowing in it - sore back, out in the cold, dead tired, lousy sleep, too much to do, going through the motions, more phone calls, a publishing deadline, friggen Santa Claus is coming to town, Damon hasn't signed yet, Bruce is on a break, tired, aggravated, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone... And in years past, I've e...

Chris Henry was a wide receiver who made millions a year. The stats are easily looked up - four arrests, a couple of suspensions, and a sad, violent death. The recaps of his life are coming in now and everyone speaks of how he had straightened up. Yet he died after getting thrown from a moving pick-up during a domestic dispute. I ain't a judge, but I certainly feel sympathetic that a 26-year-old man went in such a manner. A crying shame. Another day, another story about Cheetah - now the wife is gone, or so they say. That is a shame for the kids, I suppose, and I imagine Cheetah will be okay somehow, but it's a shame that it's all anyone is talking about. I had lunch with a dozen guys today and the the most prevalent thought was that he had to do it - he had women at his disposal - who else wouldn't do it? The women in the office were a little less understanding - they used to call him the greatest golfer ever - now they call him scumbag. I see Oral Roberts finally met ...

Feeling as if I'm losing touch, I put the news on tonight. Topping the news was the Cheetah Woods story - no kidding - three or so weeks after the idiot drove off the tree, he was story number one. His wife was seen without her wedding ring and his doctor was being investigated for steroids. Who cares? Put him in jail. Second story was the exciting news that the worst actor of all-time, Keeanu Reaves is in Buffalo making a movie. They showed him getting out of a car without a coat! What a brave man - it was cold and he wasn't wearing a coat! They showed the footage over and over and then interviewed a pack of idiots on the street. "I was so excited to catch a glimpse of him!" squealed one particularly giddy moron. "I just love him." Yeah - rent November whatever the hell it was, with Charlize Theron and then tell me how good he is. Or the one where he played a doctor - that was a bit of a stretch now, wasn't it? He must have studied hard to try and say ...

Who is that pretty young thing dressed up as Dorothy from Oz? I know that Mr. Renaldo is going to have a field day with this photo, but that is me dressed up for Halloween in 1982. It's funny but I can recall the party and why I dressed up in such a manner - it was so the good-looking girls would pay attention to me - I let them apply the make-up, and do my nails. They dressed me like a girl and then didn't bother talking to me for the rest of the night. Yvonne, of course, was nice enough to take the photo - and then hang onto it for the next twenty-seven years so that she could send it on and dare me to write a blog about it. Yeah, that's me - I'm pretty too. Look at those wonderful lips - women would go crazy to have those lips and those long eyelashes, right? Not to mention that small waistline. Uh, all of those things are long gone, and I haven't worn women's clothes in over three weeks now! Just kidding, Kathy. Honestly.

Yesterday afternoon my sister posted a blurb about an atheists claim that there is no evidence of God. The atheist contradicted herself by acknowledging that God had let her down too many times to validate that he existed. My sister rightly pointed out that acknowledging the existence of God invalidates the argument that he doesn't exist. And everyone I know has been all across the board on this subject - everyone has an opinion and probably rightly so. After the comment was posted there were 23 different postings related to the topic. I didn't even get that big of a response to my all-time favorite sitcoms posting. Yet 23 different people have 23 different views, right? He believes this, She believes that, This one doesn't believe anything and no one has the right to question what you believe... I suppose that is about it. Do you care what I believe? Should I try and change what you believe? Is what you believe something that was force-fed to you at an early age, or did yo...

Not sure what you have planned for 1 PM today but the Bills are playing the Chiefs in Arrowhead where the crowd makes it tough to call plays and where Jim Kelly is pressured into hurrying to make decisions. Oh, this isn't 1992? Okay, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Yeah, this isn't a can't miss game, but perhaps it should be. For the very future of the Bills it is a game where you should pop the corn, get your favorite drink, sit in your lucky spot, and root, root, root - for the Chiefs. Yeah, the Chiefs. The Bills need to lose this game. What good is 5 and 11 when you can go 4 and 12 and get a higher pick? Of course outsmarting everyone and drafting a linebacker from Erie Community College probably won't work anyway, but you have to try, right? So, if I'm the coach, I do everything wrong - 4th and 28 after nine false start penalties? We're going for it? It'll be a little like playing my boys in Madden - their favorite play is the fake punt - a...

I went to the one Christmas party that I go to each year and I was a little concerned that I was going to have to fake having fun, but thankfully, my friends picked me up. I even told a rather filthy, Larry David joke to about ten people and it went over pretty well. (Great joke, by the way - not fit for the blog). And the difficult part of this entire year is that there is a gnawing in the back of the brain - things just don't seem as fun as they used to - I visited the Jersey Shore, Philly, Florida, and New York City this year. I saw Bruce three times in three different cities. All rousing successes. The 27-time World Champion Yankees brought the trophy back to where it belongs. And still... They say that when one goes through deep grief they either stay stuck in the grief or emerge on the other side with a feeling of peace and a new-found sense of calm. I've seen the response in others, and I've actually felt it from time-to-time - the mundane doesn't seem so critica...

I tried snow-skiing twice - the first time I had to catch a ride down the hill on the back of my buddy Jeff's skies - I was a little bit hammered that time, so I tried it once more. I took a freaking date - rented ski's for both of us - paid for the freaking lift tickets, bought drinks in the bar, and proceeded to fall more times than a two-legged dog in the Idiatrod race. I hated every second of the night and nearly impaled said date as she tried to teach me how to ski. That one didn't work out. It cost me about $500 and I said I'd never do it again. So, I took up snowmobiling - I followed my brothers on the trail - they were going ninety. I was going thirty, afraid that I'd end up in the bottom of a pond. They stopped and waited for me and we shared some frozen beer that we were carrying in a mason jar. "Isn't this great?" my brother John asked. On the way home I drove the snowmobile - his snowmobile - off a couple of mailboxes, and I was never asked...

Working outside a lot I must say that I'm not a big fan of the winter. Who wants to dress up just to function? The body works harder in the cold and all that, and like my dogs, I would much rather be warm. Yet I live in the Northeast, in a city that has a reputation for snow (even though there are a lot of places worse off then Buffalo - snow-wise, anyway). So, there is a certain element of 'putting up with it' in play. Days like today, though, I don't mind at all. I seriously doubt if I'm going anywhere at all. The storm came blowing through at midnight. Everyone was already snug in their beds. There was little to worry about other than the idea that the morning would bring nothing except for a full house and a lot of noise. My out-doors work will be shut down for the day. A day of setting up schedules and preparing for work hardly even seems like work. And it got me thinking back in time... ...to the Blizzard of '77 and how we were all stuck in the big house o...

I've had enough Tiger news. I don't want to hear anything more about him. I no longer admire him, will cheer for him, or frankly even care about him. We have breaking news from Tiger Woods mansion - Elin was really pissed. No kidding? And Nancy Grace has been running the same footage for a week - Tiger making the call to have his name removed from someones phone. I've heard that ten times and that's just walking by the set. Kind of reminds you of the OJ crap, without the bloody crime scene, doesn't it? TMZ is reporting that Tiger Woods' Mother-in-Law is also pissed. Yet the one person we haven't heard from is Tiger. Which begs the question, how does he respond? Does he cop to every feel he got, or does he deny? Does he play the sex addict card, trying to evoke sympathy? Jesper Parnavik, the golfer no one knew about until now is more pissed than everyone else because that was his nanny for god's sake. Yet I don't feel like Tiger can take enough punish...

I've officially lost it - I can no longer shake any one's hand without immediately thinking about getting hand sanitizer. Today was particularly troublesome as I saw a bunch of people and immediately had to shake hands. There was one particularly sceevy bastard who wanted to offer his hand and I kept pretending that I didn't see it. Finally, he thrust it right into my mid-section - so I shook it. Don't touch your hands to your mouth, don't touch your hands to your mouth , I kept thinking. Thankfully, there was a bathroom nearby - I cleaned my hands and headed back out to the group- don't you know someone new came up and stuck their freaking hand out - shake, shake, shake - asshole sneezed too. The rest of the meeting was all about not touching anyone else - but of course, I shook about three more hands. What am I running for office? Why do these people want to touch my hand anyway? So stupid - I'm turning into Howie Mandel. I found a bottle of sanitizer on m...

Just read an article about a married couple in Manhattan who paid $150,000 for an apartment in the greatest city in the world. Remember that price... The apartment is 14X11 or about 175 square feet. In two years, they will own the space. 14X11? The dog's crate is about that size. Yet they own the place and live in it - they say comfortably. They have a couple of twin beds in the space and enough room to turn around. They keep their clothes in the cupboards and keep extra sets at work. There is no fridge, no appliances - how could there be? But they say they're happy. A 27-inch tv is on the wall, and they share the space without too much of a hassle - they swear! They dump their garbage down the hall. Use the bathrooms in the building - and love the fact that they are so close. She said this - he didn't comment. I can't imagine - they paid almost double for the space then I did for my house, and despite the comfort of my home, I don't even share a bedroom with my wif...

To Corinne - Happy Birthday - a song about appreciating the day you've been given - by Mark Knopfler Our Shangri-la It's the end of the day for surfer boys and girls. The sun's dropping down in the bay and falling off the world. There's a diamond in the sky, our evening star. In our shangri-la. Get that fire burning strong, right here and right now. It's here and then it's gone, there's no secret anyhow. We may never love again to the music of guitars In our shangri-la. Tonight the beauty burns into my memory. The wheel of heaven turns, above us endlessly. This is all the heaven we got, right here where we are. In our shangri-la. This is all the heaven we got, right here where we are. In our shangri-la.

Just goofing around with the kids this morning and we got to talking about the types of raps we would do if we were indeed inclined to become hip-hop artists. It started with my poor wife who has to face all of the ridicule and we centered in on the condition of her room as she tries to clean it up from the Christmas-shopping rush. My name is Kathy and I'm here to say, my room's a mess.... We all paused as the boys searched hard for the next line. And my three sons are gay. I offered. I was roundly booed. (Not that there's anything wrong with it). So now the boys were on my case. My name is Clifford and I'm here to say, I like listening to Bruce most every day. I eat so much pasta its coming out my nose, and I hardly ever change my clothes. Of course, my kids are not exactly Dr. Dre when it comes to rapping but we had a nice little laugh over their lyrics. Yet the real shame of it is that normal rapping is never quite so tender and funny, is it? The other night my wife...

I've kind of stepped out of the political ring this year. A lot of people have been sending me notes about how they figure Obama is doing, Sarah-Mania still aggravates me, but I haven't heard hide-nor-hair from W - so I figure I'm way ahead of the game. Yet being that I don't have a lot of info - too much else on my mind - I was a bit dismayed when I heard there were more troops heading for Afghanistan. Now, perhaps, I should be happy that we are fighting the good fight, but I just don't know. I figure that less fighting is good. Maybe I'm wrong. I just thought that perhaps we'd be able to step away from it - not so simple, I suppose. No one has ever accused me of not being simple. Yet I love to read the newspaper before I get started on whatever I want to write about and today was no exception. I read about the student convicted of killing her roommate in Italy. I read about a couple in Niagara Falls who were indicted for not watching their child who died o...

... had to do another Tiger post - thanks for the material Karl... 1. Tiger's new movie is out: "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hydrant". 2. The police asked Tiger's wife how many times she hit him. She said "I don't know exactly… but put me down for a 5." 3. Tiger Woods is so rich that he owns lots of expensive cars. Now he has a hole-in-one. 4. What's the difference between an SUV and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards. 5. What were Tiger Woods and his wife doing out at 2:30 in the morning? They went clubbing. 6. Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree. He couldn’t decide between a wood and an iron. 7. Phil Mickelson contacted Tiger's wife to pick up some tips on how to beat Tiger. 8. Tiger was a mailbox and a telephone pole short of his first "grand slam." 9. What does Tiger Woods have in common with a baby seal? They both got clubbed by Norwegians. 10. What’s the big deal ? He’s been driving into the tr...

It blows my mind sometimes when I hear that the infidelities of others truly don't carry a lot of weight in regard to the big picture. I recall that Clinton's dalliances were greeted with indifference by some women. My mother shocked me by saying, 'Who cares?' Of course, Tiger is story one everywhere. I was having lunch in a small diner in the middle of a small town somewhere in New York State. "He's a billionaire. His wife has to expect it," one old guy said. "And what's the difference? He's still the greatest golfer in the world." But I wonder? My wife shocked me by saying that she didn't feel sorry for Tiger's wife. "She knew what she was getting into," Kathy said. "Yeah, but bad behavior is bad behavior, regardless, right? Even if they had an agreement in their marriage, he still is making her look bad, right? "Boo-hoo, she's loaded." Yet does money take away the feeling of being betrayed? What is ...

...sports talk radio is now talking about Tiger and his transgressions. The announcer was saying that Chris Rock once said that, "A man is only is as faithful as his options." That's funny... Yet my wife should be in good shape then. My options have been severely limited for quite awhile. About a month ago I was getting ready to go somewhere and I turned to my brother Jim and made the mistake of asking him if "I looked all right." "You ain't think of attracting anything, are you?" he asked. Perfect. Options limited.

Wha! I'm so famous! Wha! I'm so rich. Wha! You newspaper people won't leave me alone! I love the statements that come out after the fall from grace. Tiger admits to his transgressions, cites his values, his wonderful wife, and the belief that God will take him to where he needs to go from here. All right - I suppose that is the only way to handle it, but then to cry and whine about the coverage that the tabloids blast his family with? There are a billion reasons why Tiger is left to face the music. He sold himself to the world as being one way, and turns out he wasn't. Fine, who are we to judge, but to look for sympathy because people won't leave him alone? Whatever - the OJ murders kind of laid rest to the idol worship in my life. I like millions of others marvel at the way that Tiger swings a golf club, but in the end, he's just putting a ball into a hole. My son Sam chirpped in the other night when the story broke and we were all talking about the tearing dow...

Some people accuse me of rooting against the Buffalo teams, but my wisdom on that is you can fool me a bunch of times but after 40 or so years I catch on. The Bills and Sabres had been stringing me along for so long that I grew weary and now it is more fun to make fun. But I thought we had a chance at this one. Buffalo was shooting for the longest stretch of days without snow - we were real close to passing the 2nd longest stretch - we just had to make it to Friday - and it was 65 on Saturday. "We're going to do it!" I told the kids. Sunday...no snow. Monday...no snow. The big weatherman suggested it might end. "We can do it!" I yelled at my tv. Yet lo and behold, it was all another tease. I woke up this morning to see the blanket of snow. My first thought was about all of the people who had worked so hard to see the record be topped and how disappointed they would be this morning. "We gave it a-hundred-and-ten-percent," Don Paul the channel 4 guy said...