Thoughts of a Common Man

I'm wiped out from baseball. As stated, I watched every game last night and then couldn't get to sleep. The Red Sox are out! No Youk, or Pedroia, or Ellsbury, or Beckett. The season is halfway to being a complete success. And so, I was tired all day on Thursday and I kept thinking about Michael Jackson because his doctor's case is in the news and I wondered if he had any leftover profpofol. Can you imagine having to get yourself knocked out each night to get some decent rest? I'm of the belief that I will sleep well eventually. Can't imagine having to get something administered to get rest, but man, you know those precious seconds before you go under, don't you? Aren't those fun? When I had my knee done a few months back the nurse and doc were talking to me as they wheeled me down. Life got so calm and serene. They asked me to start at 100 and count back. I made it to about 96. Those were the four best seconds of the last three years. Of course, I was a litt...

Excuse me while I wax poetic, but baseball has been my one constant in life. I can't even begin to guess about the number of games I've watched, but I can certainly tell you exactly where I was as some of the greatest games ever played out. Carlton Fisk's homer in the '75 series? I was at the Town Park in North Collins. A friend told me what had happened. I was just about to turn 11. The Bucky Dent homer? On a soccer field. My coach, Mike Loretto, had stolen my radio. He told me what happened. The Aaron Boone homer? In a Syracuse hotel room. My cell phone rang at 1:45 a.m. Ten times. The last being my brother Jeff. We were so happy. So happy. So last night was to be an epic night. If the Yankees won, they'd most likely keep the Red Sox in it. If they lost all hell would break loose. I started watching the games with my baseball mini-me, Sam. We had three different games on and were checking the 4th important game on our computers and phones. Nothing was settled by t...

This woman stands all of two feet and three inches. She's 22 years old. Where to begin. I don't know why but as a teenager I wanted to make it to 6' tall. In fact, my hero during the grade school years was Wilt Chamberlin so I really, really wanted to be 7'2". I did make it to 6', but now that Matt claims to be taller than me it sort of pisses me off. Why should I care? Can you imagine Wilt standing next to this woman? At 2' 3" there are a lot of things that just aren't going to happen. You won't ever ride a roller coaster at a 6-Flags park. In fact, you may not even make it to the bumper cars. I have never been as mad as I was at Disney when we waited in line for the bumper cars and one of my boys couldn't get on because he was less than an inch short of making the ride. And we are coming off a week when bullying is a real topic in this land. Kids are killing themselves because others are making fun of them. I sincerely hope this woman has...

Isn't this awful? I am shocked and dismayed that someone might post such a photo on Facebook. What is the purpose? Does anyone not know that Bush did a lousy job? Are there very many people out there who are thoroughly enamored with Obama, or the black guy, as he is referred to here? The problem being, of course, that the political system in this country is really, really broken. People vote as if they are picking a horse in a race, and if their guy wins they think that they can just sit back and make fun of the other guy. I wasn't a Bush fan. I may have made that clear in this space before. I certainly am not a fan of Sarah Palin. But I can certainly tell you the one thing that I stopped doing after the last election...and that's fighting about it. I'm done. I'm not going to bash the next president unless he or she does something worthy of being bashed. I certainly won't do it based on whether they are a Republican or a Democrat because you know what? Both grou...

If I see that written one more time as someones Facebook status, I might puke. And the whole concept of Facebook and Twitter and yes, even blogs is funny. The "look at me" society that we live in. Of course, it is a society that I thrive in. And I thrive in it because I love busting balls. It's the best. Facebook makes it easy because people post their most passionate words on there and they also post new photos of themselves. "Do you like my haircut?" Now how am I supposed to handle that? "What kind of soup was it?" I'll ask. "Soup, what're you talking about?" "Didn't they give you soup with your haircut?" That will make someone think for the entire day. And then the stuff about the Bills. "Whoo-hoo!!!! We're number one!" I may answer that by bringing up the 12 years without playoffs or the four straight Super losses. That works because the person is so hyped up and when you tear them down, they lash out. ...

The funny thing about being a fan of the 27-time World Champion Yankees is that they are expected to win. When they do, it is more about relief than anything else. I've enjoyed the titles that they've won...but none more than 1996 when they weren't supposed to win. The Bills, this year, weren't supposed to win anything. I picked them for 5 and 11. I might be way the hell off. Now, I have been wrong before, and listening to the kids go nuts Sunday afternoon, I'm sort of glad that I am wrong. I still don't like the idol worship of people that can catch a ball, hit a ball, or slap a puck, but man, I had a lot of fun as a kid watching the Bills, Sabres and Yankees. "19 and 0!!!!!!!" Sam was screaming. "Eat that Brady! Go Team Stevie! We love Fitz!" All the while I was trying to watch the Yankees. But I gave it up as the 2nd half started. Life's too short. I watched the rest of the game with the boys. I am surprised. Shocked, actually! Good fo...

I was behind an elderly woman who was driving at a 28 mph pace in a 45 mph zone. She put her turn signal on about eight miles before she actually turned, and then her turn was in slow motion. We've all been there, right? And I thought of something that happened to someone who I knew in college. Someone in his family had been killed when he was passing under an overpass where a car had come flying down. I remember thinking, 'Man, if he'd just stopped for gas, it wouldn't have happened to him.' And some times we want to rush through things. Coincidentally The Stones were playing in my car as the old woman worked her way through the turn. "You aren't the only ship adrift on this ocean," Mick scolded. Indeed. It's easy to force our own agenda down other people's throats. I do it all the time. I need things done in my time frame and in my expectation of how long it should take. All of the anxiety of life seems to be in chasing that time frame. It...

Had a long drive home last night in the cold, dark rain...listened to a few tunes on the way, and when I checked Facebook when I'd finally settled there was a message from my sister Carrie about a Jackson Browne lyric...it took me a minute, but I got it, and we were off and running on a discussion of his talents. And it struck me that we had a lot going on in that house on the hill. There was so much culture, so many discussions about talent. We would huddle together, in time before the net, and decipher the lyrics, and revel in the words. And we were all reading a lot...okay, not John and Jim, but the rest of us. All books for fun. I'd read book after book, never caring about when book reports were due. In fact, when that was announced in class, every head in the room turned my way. I was the Internet for stealing a paper way before the Net. I have vivid recollections of Dad's records being played as he sang the words for us and Mom was always in trouble for having so many...

So what the hell was Brad Pitt going for when he commented that he was not living an interesting life during the time he was married to Jennifer Aniston? Seriously, did he think that we poor slobs were going to feel sorry for him? Poor best-looking guy in the world with more money than God, married to the girl all other guys wants, is bored? Now I don't know what to make of Jennifer Aniston other than as we are all aware, say it together now: She's no Kathy Fazzolari. She isn't either. I mean why the hell does she keep getting dumped? Perhaps there is a deformity of sorts, or bad breath or other bad smells coming from other areas. Who the hell knows? How many different guys have I seen her with? They all seem to break her heart after she tells Ellen or Oprah or Tyra that this time she's head over heels. Ten minutes later her perfect ass is out the door. Now we know, of course, she's uninteresting. I read a whole lot of things into such a statement and its probably u...

My heart ached today as I read the recap of the suicide of the 14-year old boy in the Buffalo area. The news accounts explained that he was bullied and that he had tried to rail against it. Being 14 years old is as confusing as being 46 years old is. Maybe even more so. Yet the bullying shit is really confusing as well. I was afraid of a couple of guys in junior high. One little mean bastard followed me around, sensing my fear, and intimidating me at every turn. He was thrown off the track by my older brother and my buddy Jeff who explained that if one hair on my head was hurt...he'd have to deal with them. Later on, me and the bully became fast friends and shared a lot of laughs. Yet my brother and my buddy also play a big part in this blog because they were both there in my worst moments. Scenario one: We had just returned from camping for a weekend in the woods. We were all great friends. We were about 16 or 17 at the time. My mother was coming to pick us up after our weekend of...

I couldn't go to sleep last night. Usually it's the other way around...I go to sleep okay, but wake up real, real early. But last night it was different. So, I put on ME Television. That channel has changed my life. Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart, CHEERS, Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore. All better than the nightly singing and dancing shows and the reality stars of today. Anyhow. Last night it was late. So I got the Twilight Zone and then Perry Mason. On the Twilight Zone it all took place in a diner. I was entertained by the signs posted that offered coffee for ten cents and pancakes for thirty-five cents. Coffee is about $4.50 at Starbucks now a days. I'm sounding old, aren't I? Yet Perry Mason was even weirder because Raymond Burr, in my mind's eye was a fat, ornery guy who was stuck in a wheelchair. Not when he was a lawyer. In the dark, after midnight, I Googled him to see what I remembered. Did you know they are pretty sure he was gay? They also are quite sure that to cove...

For the past few months I have been going down to the hockey arena in town as the Sabres redo their locker rooms. Today, I made the mistake of heading down there as the men who are paid like kings for shooting rubber at a net were about to practice. Of course the lot was filled with hundred thousand dollar vehicles. The security guard, who knew me by face, reminded me to stick to the job site and not bother the players. I headed thru the door and ran smack into Ryan Miller, the highly paid guy who blocks pucks with his body for millions, and the owner of the team, Terry Pegula who made his billions in the fracking business. I shrugged by. I met up with a worker. "They blocked off our access," the bricklayer said. "Pisses me off. Their lockers are nicer then my house and after placing block here for two months I'm not allowed to lock eyes with them." What are we doing? "Son-of-a-bitches are ashamed of us. They don't want the players to see the workers. G...

About 25 years ago I worked every day with a guy named Zane Conway. I think I've written about him plenty. He's a man who's made it his life mission to spend time in every country in the world. The last time I spoke with him he was in China. The time before that...South America. When I met him we worked side-by-side pouring concrete in San Jose. The Fairmount Hotel, if you're ever in town...we poured every floor. And on Mondays, hating life, at 21 years old, I'd walk thru the gate and I'd be greeted by Zane. "What's up!?" He'd cheerfully ask as the concrete truck pulled up. "There's breakfast." Zane took that line from my Dad who loved to chide us about how hard we were working. "How can you be so fu*%$ng happy?" I'd ask. "What's not to be happy about?" Zane would say. "I'm young, I'm white and I'm free. It's Monday and there are endless possibilities." "Yeah, we could la...

The choices we make and the chances we take determine our destiny. Caught an old movie the other night with Marissa Tormei (she's no Kathy Fazzolari) and Robert Downey Jr. where Marissa ignores the love that is budding between them so that she can chase down the man who's she supposed to marry. She only has his name. She thinks that he is her destiny. And it got me thinking a lot about choices. Perhaps because I was in Erie the other day. I easily could have stayed there. After school I went to California. I could have stayed there (although there are a lot of nutty people out there). On to Maryland and I definitely wanted to stay there. Or in Connecticut. What would have happened had I stayed there? Movies are cool because all of the choices are in front of the stars and easy for the audience to see and once the choice is made and the credits roll we are all supposed to assume that it is happily ever after. Nobody ever does the sequel in which Marissa and Robert Downey fight l...

A couple of weeks ago I was passing by a guy who had a torch in his hand. He was welding a huge tank of metal and his hood was down. I didn't want to bother him so I headed on by. He had a bag of sunflower seeds on his bench, and I grabbed a handful as I wandered away. "Help yourself," he said. I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Keeping a close eye on the seeds?" I asked. "Trying to quit smoking," he said. "I've been smoking for 35 of my 49 years. I've had enough." We had a nice long discussion about the evils of tobacco, how hard it is to quit, but more importantly why he had to. "I have a couple of kids who are more aware. I don't want them to see me doing things that sabotage me." I wished him luck. I sort of felt bad about taking the handful of seeds that had become his lifeline in quitting to smoke. A few days later, I was back on the job. Before arriving I bought a bag of seeds at the convenience store. My buddy was ...

Nice house, huh? I used to live there. I lived there with George, Fluffy, Guy, Rick, Palmer, and a lot of other guys. We roamed the halls of that house and spilled beer in every single room. We broke the front windows at least ten times. It was the house I lived in during my senior year of college in Erie, Pa. and I walked right up to it and thought about looking in the windows this afternoon. I didn't. What a shithole, huh? We got tossed out the weekend before we graduated. We spent the last two nights of our college career with our cars loaded with our stuff. We slept in the woods. We all tried to drink a case of beer. I did it. And man, it made me sad. Twenty-five years gone. I don't have regrets, mind you, but I thought about the people I loved back then. All of the guys in that house and more. My best friend back then, Lisa, who tried in vain to get us to see the big picture. We didn't see much of it. "Man, that's kind of sad," I said as I slipped back in...

Bernie Madoff, multiple drunk driving convictions, cheating on your wife when she's giving birth, sleeping with your husband's best friend, driving drunk with the kids in the car, robbing graves. I was thinking about all of these things yesterday simply because I picked up the newspaper and read two stories. One was about a securities guy who bilked money out of his entire family and their friends. Like millions, actually, and of course, the shit eventually hit the fan. Now he gets prison. "He's a great guy. Solid Family. Can't believe it." The quotes from his friends are what gets to me. He robbed people of their retirement, their grocery money, their Bills season tickets money. Every dime. He hopes to make restitution. But he was the good guy in the paper. There was actually a woman who spent every nickel of money raised at a benefit that had been held for her son, who has cancer. She gambled it all away. She confessed to having a gambling problem. Uh, ya...

One of my aunts was named Grace. We had a Boxer dog named Ricky. I remember the dog going after my aunt and my father saying, "Hail Ricky, full of Grace." Funny what your mind does for you. I thought of Ricky and Grace and my Dad today as I drove down Main Street in the City of Buffalo. Stopped at the red light I watched a woman with an umbrella in her right hand, a poster board sign around her neck, as she said the words of the Hail Mary and counted it off on the rosary in her left hand. There were two other people standing out there with her, in front of the abortion clinic. Their signs read: ABORTION IS MURDER! And it kind of struck me. I read the prayer words from her lips. It was only 7:30 in the morning. It all seemed like a colossal waste of time to me. Now, I'm not dumb enough to get into the pro-choice, pro-life argument. I know what I believe. Not sure I'd stand on a corner and preach it to someone else. Not sure I am confident enough to be able to speak wit...

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. I was flipping through the stations when I saw Greta Van Sustern, the woman who mangled herself with plastic surgery after the OJ trial, exclaim: "The economy is in shambles! We'll talk about how to fix it!" I wasn't sticking around to see how it all worked out. I had the Dick Van Dyke Show starting on ME Television. You see, as the leg continues to bark, I've gotten in touch with a lot of old shows. How I've been longing for yesterday. Besides, what were four well-dressed talking heads, eating hundred dollar dinners and sleeping in thousand dollar hotel suites going to tell me about how to stretch a dollar? I relied on the Petrie's for that. Coincidentally, Rob lost his job for a couple of months as the Alan Brady Show went on summer hiatus. The laughs ensued as Rob and Laura talked about their roles. There was a moment when Laura offered to do dance lessons when Rob yelled: "My wife isn't going ...

I just can't resist a mug shot. Especially when the guy arrested is a former Suck Sox Hero who through his cheating helped them break a perfectly good curse established by selling Babe Ruth to the 27-Time World Champions so the old Suck Sox owner could produce a Broadway play. When Manny was on the Sux there were a lot of fans of the team who lived with the horrible behavior because he was unbelievable at hitting the ball over the wall. (Even though the wall is only 260 feet away from the plate). The media and the announcers forgave the boorish behavior in a sport where acting like a self-congratulator used to be met with a fastball to the ribs. There are still guys that play that way. They wear pinstripes. But those teams for the Suck sox reveled in their dirty clothes, their idiotic behavior and throwing 75-year old coaches to the ground. I hated them. I thought they were cheating. They were. So was everybody else. Manny cheated more than the rest. He got busted twice after every...

...Got nowhere to run...nowhere to go. It's my favorite lyric from Born in the USA, a song that I usually skip on the I-pod because it was overplayed. Yet I thought of that lyric a lot the last few days. First of all because I read a lot and watched a lot about the terror attacks of ten years ago. Possibly because in 2001 we also had a life-threatening tumor growing inside of our son. 2001 was the year when it all changed. Everything. Over the weekend I played my boys in Madden. I am in rough shape when it comes to games these days because I don't pick up a controller very often and they pick them up every three minutes. So I need an advantage. I was the Patriots at home and they were the Bills. Sam played the first and third quarters and Jake had the second and fourth. I beat them 28 to 24. The big lugs that were just little boys when the towers came down were pissed. Cut to this morning, I headed into a convenience store and there was a WWE Magazine on the stands. My mind pla...

By request...the editorial for September 12, 2001. I must say that I received hate calls and letters for writing this. Not exactly sure why ... Don't Immediately Return Hatred Before we think about retalliation and counting the bodies we need to think about life, love and those closest to us. In the numbing aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, we need to appreciate what's important: Our love for one another. We hate the people who did this and we want to torture them for what they've done. Hatred resulted in these very atatcks. When does the circle of violence stop? We react. Terrorists respond to our attacks, and we react again. Rather than hatred, Americans need to see this as an opportunity for change. We need a new direction. Years from now we'll remember where we were when this occurred. How many people immediately thought of their loved ones? How many people turned to prayer for those who were hurt? Did we feel the pain of th...

Early on in my writing career I often found myself flabbergasted by the way the world worked. I can remember sitting in my parents basement, next to the hot water tank, typing on my bright green screen about world peace. That's the way it goes when you're 18 or 19 and no one can tell you anything. You can believe that peace is possible if we all swear to it happening. I remember writing something about how the president should declare a day to be murder-free. Wouldn't that be cool? One whole day without murdering someone. I am pretty sure that I could get through it. I am also very certain that collectively we can't. Somewhere out there, today, someone is going to purposely kill somebody else. A cheating wife. A business partner. An in-law, an outlaw, a drug dealer, a man who doesn't believe in the same God you do. A fight over land, or money, or drugs, or a parking spot, or a seat on the bus. There will be more than one murder. And I think back to what I wrote the ...

It's been a trying week. The leg sort of crapped out on me again last Sunday. The dead feeling went from hip to toe and I ended up in the emergency room, worried about blood clots. All good there, but the swelling remains and there's a possibility that the nerve was nicked during the original surgery. I asked the doc if I did too much and he shrugged. "I can't change you anyway," he said. "Obviously you're gonna' do whatever you want to do." And while watching the Sopranos last night and seeing Tony go off on someone, I turned to my beautiful wife. "What's wrong with Italians? Impatient and angry and so passionate." "It's pretty accurate," my wife said. And it is. I sat across from Jake at dinner last night. We went to Chef's Restaurant in Buffalo. It's supposed to be one of the best Italian Restaurants in the city. I don't really concur. Anyway, Jake was fired up about school. He was funny, mean and irrita...

In the last couple of weeks I've been really exposed to a lot of 9/11 horror stories. They are stories of pain, heartbreak and attempting to move forward in the face of unbelievable grief. In the time since 9/11, I have learned that it isn't easy. It is the furthest thing from easy that we have in this world. I just switched the channel from Breaking News of a new terror threat to a rerun of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I'd much rather deal with Ted Baxter. This is the one where they bet him he can't get through an entire newscast without screwing something up. He makes it to the sign-off and then says...this is Bed Taxter reporting...I saw this show about thirty years ago, and I was waiting for the line. Isn't it funny what the mind stores? And it stored a lot from that day ten years ago. It stored enough to know that I never want to feel such feelings again. The threat mentioned this evening deals with New York and Washington. Democrat, Republican or Tea Party...we ...

The fact that I'm writing this blog right now is a minor miracle. I like technology, I really do. I enjoy making fun of all the people I love on Facebook. By the way...if I see one more photo of a kid getting on a bus with a mother crying, "Oh, where did the time go, my little bastard is in the 3rd grade," I might throw up. But anyway, tonight I was writing reports on my brand new, work-issued laptop. I was almost done. Last report...then sit back and look at the baseball scores! But no!!!!! Something flashed on my screen. There was an icon of my touch pad with a red arrow across the center of it. Everything locked up. "What the mudder@#$#%&^?" I started tapping the keys. The mouse was locked. Different things started popping up on the screen including a telephone number that asked me if I needed help. I dialed the number. The guy who answered the phone sounded like Apu from the Simpsons. I am not prejudiced. I gave it a try. It took us ten minutes to get th...

I saw all of the flags this morning on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. Each flag representing a life lost on September 11, 2001. Ten years. Good God it's been ten years already. And it still makes me sick. Lately I've been reading a lot about people who've been directly impacted. We all were there in one way or another, but I'm talking about the husbands who lost wives or the women who lost their husbands. They have all started over somehow. Most of the recounting of that day's events are enough to make your stomach turn. People speaking of how they never really found their loved ones. Sickening for sure. And the other day Jessie Ventura was on the radio telling me that it was all planned out. That the government knew about it. That they didn't bother to stop it. That all those lives lost were collateral damage so that we could further a sinister agenda. That's so sick that it scares me more than anything else. And I hope that it just can't be true. There wo...

When I was a kid my Dad used to call me Jerry Lewis. I suppose it may have been because I was funny and talented or because I wore big, goofy glasses when I was in the 4th grade. But to hear him tell it, it was cause I was kind of goofy and senseless in a Nutty Professor sort of way. I was kind of indifferent to Jerry Lewis all those years because I wanted to steer clear of such a comparison...but I feel bad for the guy. He did that telethon for all those years and his kids were like his kids to him. Now I've heard a lot about him as a true father and there are grumblings that he isn't the nicest guy in the world, but he deserved better. I didn't watch the telethon this weekend, but supposedly they said some nice things about him as he decided to "retire." He didn't announce his retirement. He said no comment to any of the well-wishers. Sounds like he was shown the door, right? That's too bad. I guess that when you outlive your usefulness, you're tosse...

Of course my brother-in-law Chuck was in on the sausage stuffing...we threw a few off-color comments back and forth and then had a long drawn-out conversation about the fact that his betting about football is set to begin as he tangles with my already fired-up son, Sam. "I called Outback and made a reservation for February under your name," Sam said to Chuck the other night. I laughed out loud as they say and spit my drink. That kid has taunting down to a science. He already has the lines for next Sunday's games. And he has already started to go over them with me...for hours. "Dad, would you take the Bills with the points against the Chiefs?" "I wouldn't take the Bills if they were playing me, you and your mother," I said. "Come on, you picked the Super Bowl winner in September last year...help me out here." And so I did. Look it up. I took the Packers in last September 8th's blog. So let me see. In the AFC East: Patriots and the J-E-...

I'm supposed to be swinging a club with my Baltimore friends right now. Thunder, lightning and heavy rain spared them a huge embarrassment. Or vice-versa. But yesterday we had a bunch of hours of togetherness as we made Italian Sausage at my brother Jim's house. I'm not talking a minor operation of filling a couple of skins here. We had hundreds of pounds of meat. Miles and miles of casings and Dad's recipe. If we sold this stuff on the open market there would be a stampede for it. Not kidding, it's that perfect. We started doing it about twenty-five years ago as this generation...Dad probably did it for 50 years...Grandpa another 50. So we kind of got the recipe down. About ten years ago, my beautiful wife discovered the secret. Jake was in the hospital and Jeff prepared a meal of homemade Italian Sausage for us. Kathy wouldn't touch the stuff up until that point even though I told her that ours was better than anything else she ever had. ...

So, this weekend is the unofficial end of summer, huh? The kids are going back to school on Tuesday, the pennant races are winding down and the 27-time World Champion Yankees are in 1st, the Bills are getting ready to kick-off another exciting season... ...and the kid we sent off to college in a tearful manner (my wife) is back in his bed just a few hundred feet away. He left 9 days ago. He's been back twice. He's bored. He misses home. On Monday, three days after leaving, he ate meatloaf that I wanted for cold sandwiches the next day. Last night...back again. I'm going to make the evening news with my reaction if this continues for much longer. A little back story here: I was rooting for the University @ Buffalo and a car ride there and back on a daily basis. Hunky and Dorey were telling me about the beauty of the small campus and the need for Hunky to become a man on his own. He would learn about hard work, sacrifice and missing the things he loves at St. Bona...

Remember when Sonny and Cher were singing I Got You Babe as Cher held the beautiful baby up high for all of America to see. Chastity was so cute, wasn't she? Have you seen him lately? A comedian yesterday said that he looked like Porky Pig with a moustache. That's downright mean, but I laughed. Does that make me a bad guy? Because you see, I don't care that Chastity is now Chaz and that he is now going to be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. I really won't watch it, and I won't pay a lot of attention to the people who think it's just awful that Chaz is trying to live her life in the most practical manner that he sees fit to live her life. All right, reading that sentence back, I may be a little confused, but like I said, it's her life and he can live it anyway that she sees fit. I feel sad for her actually. He has the absolute right to dance on National television. I'm not sure what she did to become a star, but his Mom and D...