Thoughts of a Common Man

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of work. So, the week off is coming to a close. Let's do the tally: five rounds of golf. I'm not ready for the tour - three-putted everything yesterday, but good fun with good friends, a few cold beers, and a tan that makes me look like Buddha, as one buddy put it. Didn't worry about anything other than where the ball was going off the tee. The weather was absolutely perfect as well. I couldn't have ordered more blue skies or sunny days - perhaps someone was watching out for me there. Plenty of time with the boys, as well as my parents, siblings and the in-laws. We had a great birthday party, nearly every night of watching baseball, some good meals, and arguments about the state of the Sabres and Bills. We shot some hoops - no small feat at 45 years old - and cleaned up the yard. Sam and I planted the garden together, and he wondered why I just didn't buy the tomatoes instead of getting dirty. And I remembe...

As if my opinion counts for anything... I thought Crystal was a better singer than Lee. Now mind you, I didn't watch the show after the first two or three performances, but after hearing Crystal sing once I declared the contest over. In my infinite wisdom I told my wife to stop watching because it wouldn't be close. It reminds me of golfing with my brother once and arguing with him over which club I should use. I was convinced I could get it to the green with a three-iron. "You're going to end up in the center of the pond," he said. "You'll see," I answered. I swung, and of course, ended up dead center in the water. Feeling completely spent and knowing what was coming, I turned to Jeff. "Don't you ever get sick of being wrong?" he asked. Yeah. I Do. The Gary Coleman story is also nothing but a tragedy. That little guy was spiraling out of control. I even wrote about him after a recent arrest, but he had such a battle all through his lif...

One of my college buddies always has loved saying that about a particular type of girl. Over and over, I'd hear him utter the phrase and he'd always laugh after he finished saying it. I thought about it this morning when I struggled to get up out of bed. My bones were aching a little from four rounds of golf in 7 days. Then again, that's a lot of swings. Yet what really brought it to mind was because I shared dinner with my buddy, his wife and their beautiful family. 2/5ths of the beautiful family is a set of twins who are just four years old. "I'm almost five," the beautiful girl said. "Soon, I'll be five real soon." "And then you'll be twenty-five and then you'll be forty-five, just like that," I said. My buddy laughed. "Wait a minute," he said. And wait a minute is right. The energy of two young children is certainly contagious. The grace and curiosity that they deliver to every setting is invigorating. I'd forg...

...of fools gold and looking for a sign. People pay an awful lot of money to vacation in this type of weather. I haven't spent much more then green fees and so far, so great. My idea for the break was to get as far away from my normal, messed up thinking. No routines, no Howard, do whatever comes naturally sort of. Just relax! Today I headed to my parents home and helped out around their massive, beautiful yard. It's a lot for them to keep up with, and despite my basic ineptness, I can do a few things. I helped put away the pool cover, put up the screen for the garage, cleaned the garage, raked the yard, and put some things away. All good work, but the heat was a killer. Got a real bonus going to lunch with my mother and having an expertly cooked burger that was the size of the cook's head. (And that's a big head). I headed for home thinking of an ice cold beer, but the backyard was annoying me so I mowed it in the scorching sun. Now the beer wasn't an option but a ...

When I was young there were plenty of tasks that needed to be done around the big house on the hill. For the most part, I wasn't allowed to do much more than what is called the grunt work. I certainly know my way around the garden, can lift a decent amount of weight, and I had the work ethic to be a real good union laborer back when my back was strong. Yet it is becoming painfully apparent that my wanting to read and write left me a little shy in the man department. My father was always taking a son along to work on this and that and impart a bit of wisdom. I wasn't interested, and before long, he left me alone. Fast-forward to today. I planned to tackle a number of household chores. I was going to start by painting the sidewalk that runs alongside our flower bed and forms our concrete stairs. Now you must know - it is all that I am allowed to paint. The freaking ground. My wife watched me paint once, and shit-canned me from all other paint duties. Yet the sidewalk was still mi...

The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be. Oprah Winfrey, of all people said that. I like it, but being away from work is a strange deal. It gives you more time to consider such statements. And to consider other things as well, such as the elimination of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" gays in the military policy. Now it's dangerous to make a call on either side of this argument, but it sort of seemed a flawed law to me anyway - sort of a small way of handling the issue. Not sure what openly gay soldiers has to do with fighting in a war, but never been there either. We needed to evolve there, I suppose. What seems even crazier to me is the bill in New York State where they are asking police officers to shoot to maim when involved in a fire fight. Are they going to ask the criminals to do the same thing? I'd probably shoot my own foot off before hitting someone else, but it seems to me that if both people have guns...

How Beautiful it is to do nothing and then rest afterward - Spanish Proverb. The golf plan is working out well - even received a few tips on chipping it onto the green. Now if someone would beat me over the head every time I try and putt in a three footer. Yet I must admit that I'm a little sore after three rounds in four days. Still so relaxing, but I'm not a young man anymore. Had a couple of beers in the stifling heat and when I got home I checked the daily news and saw that Lindsay Lohan has been court-ordered to wear an alcohol monitoring bracelet. Now through the years I've downed plenty of booze. I had so much beer in college that I detoxed for a few years afterwards. I've been asked not to get on a plane, cut off a couple of times in bars, and even left my car places because I knew it wasn't prudent for me to drive. Yet I've never been court-ordered to stop drinking. Man, you have to suck a lot of booze in some bad situations before they come looking for...

A couple of years ago Jeff and I golfed in a tourney with a couple of buddies and we paid to have a photo taken of our foursome. I never saw the photo until my brother-in-law Chuck found it in Jeff's bag last year. As I look at that photo each day, I remember the fun we had, the jokes that were told, and even how I did that day. So, I promised myself that I'd try and get a photo each time out this year. And there you go. I most likely won't share them all, but this was captured at the turn this morning. Yes, that's a hot dog I'm holding. It was gone about three minutes after the picture was snapped. Yet its strange that we are all trying to capture the moment with videos and photos. Everyone now has a camera on their phone or always at the ready, and shots can be forwarded, downloaded, photo-shopped, and doctored. It's obvious I didn't doctor the photo to make any of us look better, but we all looked great anyway. How we scored is another matter all together...

There's an old Dire Straits song that just kills me ...it's about the revitalization of society after a catastrophic event, or maybe just after the start of it all. Or perhaps about trying to pick up the pieces after a life-changing event... Like the loss of a best friend... Saw Knopfler sing it. Having a hard time getting through it. Can understand the start over...begin again sentiment. And we all will be there...eventually. We all somehow or another will find the need to begin again. Even when beginning again is absolutely ridiculous to our sensibilities. Even when the loss is too much. Even after what we lost is too much to bear. "Well, a long time ago came on a man on a track walking thirty miles with a sack on his back, and he put down his load where he thought it was the best. He made a home in the wilderness. He built a cabin and a winter store and he plowed up the ground by the cold lake shore and the other travelers came walking down the track and they nev...

There is a constant checklist running through my head. Much of it is work-related as the tasks are defined, prioritized, and hopefully accomplished. The task-list of work needing to be done around the house is also fairly heavy on any given day, but there's plenty of help there, and I've relaxed a little in that regard. The writing to-do-list has been minimized as I sit in the lull of my career, wondering if that is something I even want to do anymore, but I have a sneaking suspicion that ideas will surface. However...it can all go to hell for a week. I want to chase a white ball around. A few years ago I returned home from golfing with my buddy Scott. My wife was waiting at the door after my six hour round. "How are his kids?" she asked. "How the hell do I know?" I responded. "You just spent six hours with him. What did you talk about?" "I said, 'where'd my ball go?' Then he said, 'I found yours where the hell is mine?" A...

Talk about feeling a little long in the tooth. Matt went to his Junior Prom tonight. That's just crazy! What's even crazier is he didn't even have to pay the girl to go with him, and she wasn't related to him either. Seriously, I kid him all the time, but he's done well. Of course, in the days leading up to the prom he acted like Mr. Cool. It's an awkward age, for sure, and the last thing you want to do is express your feelings to your parents. He moved around as if the prom was just another day in his thrilling life. The thing about kids is that they don't fully understand that the old man and old lady were also young once. They don't know that we appreciate and remember the up days of life, because now it seems as if they are all sort of down. At least that is how a teen pictures it. Yet as I drove towards home tonight, I thought of the two proms that I went to. I could almost picture the girls in their dresses, and I remember meeting their parents - a...

Just when I think I'm out of the political discussion a big, fat, noxious, moronic radio host pulls me back in. Okay, I get the arguments - the environmental issues are hot-button topics. Some people believe that Al Gore is mongering fear with his global warming theories. Others feel that we are ruining the planet with our selfish ways and our dependency on fuel. Whatever - it seems to be cut along party lines anyway - as is everything else - and concrete arguments can be made on both sides. My opinion on it really doesn't matter. I can do what I can do in my personal life and hope that there is a world still standing for my kids and their kids. Yet there should be no debate about the fact that thousands of gallons spewing into the ocean will have a negative impact, right? No one can be naive enough to believe that this isn't a horrifying turn of events for the freaking fish and the seals, and the shrimp and the lobster, right? "The sea can handle the oil," Big, f...

In fiction writing sometimes it's nice to use birds as a symbol of freedom and I know I've written paragraphs about how the singing bird offered a bit of hope for the character listening to the wonderful tune. This morning there was a freaking bird outside my window that was just hammering away at a nonsensical string of noises that was akin to listening to rap music for me. I had a vision of leaping from the bed, catching that bird on a dead run, and manually strangling the life out of it. Told you I need a break. Yet it did bring a smile to my face as I thought of a couple of recent laughs that pertain to singing songs. A couple of weeks ago my wife went to see Jersey Boys . It's a long story, but I gave up my ticket and took a little guff for doing so, but when my wife returned home I asked her how the show was. "Unbelievable," she said, and then she began to sing My Eyes Adored You . Up until that very moment I had always loved that song. By the time my wife g...

Last year, in April, I sat on a beach in Florida and lectured myself about taking time out to catch my breath. The company I work for provides me with vacation time, but in past years of employment, I never took it. Last year was the exception and I found that being away was necessary. So, I even took a couple of more days in August. And here we are nearing the end of May and I haven't done what I said I was going to do. August to May is a long stretch without days off during the week. Physically shot. Mentally drained. Tired of being tired. A couple of months ago I picked the last week in May as a week off, and I'm three days away from freedom and I'm becoming hesitant. Can the world spin without my contribution for a week? Can I really just line up golf partners and play without thought of who needs me to do what? Is it possible to sleep past 5:30 AM. "You're doing it!" my wife said this morning. "I don't want to hear your excuses." She lives h...

Growing up, I can't ever remember my father being too concerned about world politics. I do recall the day when Nixon resigned and listening to it on the radio with him. I remember that he was a little troubled and that I asked him about how the world would be when I grew up. "If we're still here," he said, or somtheing to that effect, and I can remember that I was scared out of my mind. Yet we were at war; the president had just resigned; gas prices were through the roof; we'd just survived the crazy ass drug world of the 60's. There wasn't much more out of my father in regard to arguing world politics although I knew his political party and who he really disliked. Yet his one contribution to the world across the ocean was the single joke he liked to tell in political arguments to calm everyone down. "If Iran attacked Turkey from the rear, do you think Greece will help?" I thought of that joke this morning when I saw that Iran was getting ready t...

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog entitled 'The Future is Coming." The blog was written after hearing the line by comedian Bob Levy on the Howard Stern Show. It's a clever line, and I've repeated it every now and again. It's funny, but I've listened to Howard since about 1985 or so, first hearing about him back in college, and while he is distasteful for some members of the general population, I've always known about the cast of characters involved with the show. From Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf to Levy through Beetlejuice, I've sort of followed their lives as if I were watching a bad soap opera. Last night Levy and Beetle did a comedy show at the Brant Fire Hall. The place was packed, and there were plenty of people laughing, but the cringe factor was also in effect as the filthy jokes were flying. What was most interesting about the event was that I had the chance to sit with Levy and Beetlejuice for a good half hour before the show, and the cring...

Last night we were all watching the Yankee game, with our little phones going a mile-a-minute as we kept track of the out-of-town scores, the hockey playoff game, and a few new Apps that we found. Isn't it funny? Six months ago we didn't know what an App was and now we're racing to see who gets the best ones. Anyway, Sam found a Family Guy trivia game and he was reading me question after question, laughing his way through it - a very healthy, all-consuming kid giggle. Kathy and I were listening and laughing right along with his giddiness and glee. As I laughed, I thought of my own childhood and the unbelievable laughter that shook my body on any given day. We were all funny. We were all having a good time. Life was grand. And it led me into thinking to a movie I saw a few years ago - Things We Lost in the Fire - it starred Halle Berry and that hispanic actor that's really good - Del Torro? - anyway, truth be told, I got the movie on the off chance that Halle Berry migh...

So Obama spent some time in Buffalo yesterday - three hours to be exact, and he had a few wings from Duff's and visited a factory on the East side. A few observations: 1). I like the Anchor Bar wings better - so he screwed up there. 2). He snarled traffic for me and I couldn't get to one of my appointments. 3). He should have ordered the suicidal wings - wimps eat the mild or hot ones. 4). Way too much goes into his travel plans. How much does it cost just to get him to and from work. Motorcade, police escorts, low-flying planes - what a pain in the ass. How's he get up and run to the corner for a pack of smokes? 5). Some woman called him a hottie with a smokin' body. He acted a little embarrassed by the attention and this is where I can most identify with him. I wish I had a dime for every time I heard that about myself. I'd be able to buy a gumball. Yet, how do you handle such a statement? Here he is, in town for some intelligent discourse, and this lady has a cha...

The above photo ran with the caption: CLIFF AT WALMART. It was captured by a guy who used to be my friend who posted it to our fantasy baseball league. I glanced at it last night and laughed. Kathy stepped up behind me, looked at the photo and said, "It does look like you from the back. You sure that isn't you?" God, my wife is great. Anyway, to clear the record: Number One - I have a full head of hair. At least I think I do until I see myself in a mirror somewhere. Regardless, I'm going with the story that my hair is hanging in there.No way do I have such a bald spot. Number 2 - I don't go to WalMart. Not once in awhile, not once a year - never - I am a Mom & Pop type shopper and would much rather pay more from cool, real people rather than cold, corporate a-holes. Number 3 - My ass isn't that big. I think of the Mel Brooks comedy Spaceballs when the bottom half of his body is spun around, he looks down, and yells at his friends, "Why didn't y...

Ken Griffey Jr. is one of the best baseball players I've ever seen. Of course, I don't really like him because he raced home to knock the Yanks out of the playoffs in '95, and he was the first guy to wear his cap backwards - I still get aggravated when I see my kids wearing their hats with the bill to the back. What else? Oh yeah, I saw an interview with him where he explained that he spent 10 grand on a pair of sunglasses. What could possibly be on a pair of sunglasses that would make you want to spend ten grand? And wouldn't that be a bitch when you sat on them in the car? Anyway... Griffey made news this week because he was supposedly asleep in the clubhouse and was unavailable to pinch hit. Poor guy. He was beat. He's in his 40's now - I know how difficult it is to stay up past nine. But really? Sleeping during the game? Griffey has made about $100 million dollars. He has to stay awake for approximately three hours a day. Even if he flies into a city in the ...

You know, I often play a tough guy in my writing, but I'm not really one. I know that comes as something of a shock to those who have followed along in my books or on the blog. Yes, I'm something of a wussy. It all comes to light because this morning I ran into a steel erector on the first job I visited this morning. He connects iron in the air, is always dirty, is as strong as an ox, and is frankly a little terrifying to approach if his mood is off. Of course, I grew up in the construction field so I know that deep down he's just a tough guy who wants nothing more than to earn a fair wage for decent work, drink a few beers, and hang with his family. A true American. One time he was across from me at the volleyball net and we both went up to spike the ball - I got his elbow and the vinyl of the ball imprinted on my face. As I lay on the ground he stood over me. "Don't try and block it if you can't get it done," he said. Anyway, I did an audit of his work t...

I've been visiting Syracuse for work for the past 20 years or so. I normally stay in the same hotel, visit the same restaurant and try as I might to sleep in the same room. I'm not much interested in varying the routine. So, I checked into my room, turned on the laptop and got to work, with an eye on catching dinner a little later. All at once, there were two loud blasts. Sounds like a transformer blew I thought. The lights flickered and then went out. Television off, computer switched to battery power, but it grew a tad annoying. I was still typing, mind you, but the fire alarms blasting through the hotel halls caused me to pause for a couple of sentences. I'm not going anywhere , I thought. I heard voices gathering in the hall and outside my first floor window. I clearly heard someone say that the explosion and fire was down the street and that there wasn't anything wrong with our hotel - other than the power going off. I saved the report I was writing, and checked t...

One of the first recollections I have of being alive was entering the kitchen of our home at the age of three or four, standing by the fridge with my arms folded. I'd been having a battle with one of my siblings and I needed to get away. I stood there, silently, as my mother worked. "Are you being good?" she asked. I remember being put off by the question. I felt like answering, "I'm fine but those other bastards you spawned are pure evil." I was a little like Stewie Griffin. Of course, I didn't answer at all, I stood there on the verge of tears, waiting on a little comfort. "You're a good boy," my mother said. Four simple words,and 41 or 42 years later I can recall how uplifting they had been, and I think of that moment every single Mother's Day because I've always had that sort of relationship with my Mom. I always wanted to be good in her eyes. I see a real special bond between my wife and the boys as well. I know that they get o...

So, watching the Yankees bludgeon the Red Sux tonight - (Where is Frank Zocco when I need him?) - and my boy starts asking me baseball trivia off of his I-pod or whatever the hell it is. He starts by throwing me lobs about Donnie Baseball, asking me the number of gold gloves Mattingly won, his career hits, etc.... With each question, Sam is laughing because I can tell him nearly exact numbers and I recall a game back in 1991 when Mel Hall, since convicted of child molestation, hits a walk-off for the Yankees - Sam prints me the box score from that game. "How do you remember this?" he asks. We continue with his little quiz show - through Billy Martin,on to Reggie, and beyond Henry Aaron. "What about Catfish?" he asks. "Catfish Hunter," I say. "He threw a perfect game for the A's, won the World Series with the Yanks." "How old was he when he died?" Sam asks. It's a question I'm not prepared for. Suddenly, I miss Catfish. ...

I'm wondering how Lawrence Taylor is going to spin this. Will he play the, "How the hell was I supposed to know she was 16" card? Is he a candidate for sex rehab? Was it all a setup? Was he under the influence of drugs again? Did his wife not understand him? Was he bored in that lonely hotel room? Was the television broken? He'd seen all the porn? The story has been coming out in bits and pieces all day. Taylor allegedly paid $300 for the company of a hooker. She supposedly was driven to the hotel room by her pimp. Taylor supposedly had sex with her. She supposedly called an uncle to get out from under the act, and somewhere along the way she supposedly got a black eye. Taylor's people seem to be saying that the pimp did it. So...what did you do last night? Lawrence Taylor has been a nightmare for the past twenty years. He was suspended, arrested, reprimanded, divorced, reborn, rehabbed, and re-divorced, re-suspended, and re-arrested. Oh yeah, he was elected to th...

We all went to Philly for a game last year and couldn't have had a better time. The stadium was nice, the fans were happy, the beer was really cold, and there were smiles all around. Yet this is a tough town, right? They are famous for booing Santa, cheering when Michael Irving laid motionless on the field, and even driving Mike Schmidt (their own Hall-of-Famer) so crazy that he wore a disguise to the field one night. Yet the last couple of nights were truly bizarre. If you've been living under a rock, here's the recap: Tuesday night a 17-year-old ran onto the field and eluded security for awhile as the crowd cheered. One of the cops whipped out his taser gun and blasted the kid, who dropped like a wounded deer. Fine. Dumb kid. Cops being threatened for use of excessive force. Of course there is a public debate as being hit with a taser might just kill you. Is that too much? Should they have just tackled the kid? Let's move on, right? Not in Philly...the very next night...

For the last seven days I've been riding high. The entire transformation sort of hit me during the Knopfler concert and the draining self-pity of the last fourteen months that passed like one long freaking day, seemed to melt away. I told a buddy that the remedy for the malaise is to see a genius perform once a week. Pretty sure I'd get tired of that too, though. Yet that is the true kicker. I haven't figured anything out. I'm still going to work, watching the Yankees, facing difficult, difficult, trying situations - I'm going to the hospital tomorrow as my mother faces surgery - but there's a new understanding of sorts. I suppose that I've accepted that life just blows, but that you don't have to wallow in the sad, sad, sad. I have faith that my mother will be fine. Still faith...still so hopeful. Many of my thoughts through the past seven days has been about maintaining the calm. Here's a prediction - I won't. Yet the cocksure, I can whip the w...

Reading about Michael Douglas and the fact that he is sad because his son has finally been sentenced to prison, and as a father, I certainly feel the pain. There is so much to worry about in life, but as I watch my kids grow, I seriously hope that we have been able to guide them enough to keep them from hearing the line, "Will the defendant please rise." I don't know, but I think back to the days of their births, and I remember considering that the possibilities afforded them in this life were endless. They were born in the greatest country in the world, to loving parents with a shared vision of responsibility. Still... You aren't a parent unless you think about the horrid possibilities that also lie ahead. There are temptations at every turn. I want to believe that our children will spend every day just trying their best to make sure that we are proud of them. But... I had moments in my adolescence when I'm sure my parents may not have been so prideful of my acti...

Lots of topics out there getting away from me: Have you seen the rash of attacks on children in China? Knife-wielding madmen cutting up nursery school kids. One man attacks with a hammer. I read the articles in disbelief - 120 million mentally affected adults in the country. What gets me about it is that whenever I read about a terrorist attack in another country I wonder how they can be so barbaric. I see the other country in black and white and behind the times, but of course, that isn't true. The US has to be in the pennant race in domestic attacks by their own citizens, right? Speaking of behind the times. The new immigration law in Arizona is sort of human-rights-defying now, isn't it? I just know that my sentence there is going to get me in all sorts of hot water with people who don't want illegal aliens entering the country willy-nilly, but that law blows. Shouldn't a law be nondiscriminatory? If a cop stopped you and asked for paperwork would you be able to prod...

I was on the cell phone late Wednesday morning, talking about scheduling a meeting for the latter part of the week. The phone beeped to let me know that there was another call waiting. I drifted away from the conversation for a split-second to check the new call and saw the name: Dad. I went back to my conversation, fully intending to get right back to my father, but a couple of quick beeps told me that he'd left a message. "Bah!" He said. "All right, you don't have time for your old man." I deleted the message and called him back. "I need to get the lawn mowed inside the fence," he said. "What're you doing?" "Well, considering its the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, I'm working." "Ah, I guess I'll have to do it," he said. "It kills my back and knees, but that's okay, I'll get it done." I was both amused and irritated with the conversation. We're talking a 80X80 patch of ...