Thoughts of a Common Man

Being a creature of habt, to the point of mental illness, I do the same things each day. I stop at the same convenience store for the paper and see the same clerk each morning. I couldn't tell you her name, but she's a nice lady. We chat. Of course, she also chats with hundreds of other people as well. I sort of tease her about it. Because she hears the same shit every day. "It's cold out there." "It's a nice day, if you're a duck," when it's raining. "God, it's windy." "Is it hot enough for you?" I always ask her if anyone has mentioned it to her. She just rolls her eyes. And it's senseless of course. The small talk about the weather is very often just something to complain about. I don't mind the hot weather. In fact, it's way better than the blowing snow and freezing cold. And I get to show off my summer body. Of course, the hot weather is just temporary. In 60 days we'll be t...

Remember the moment in all of the old Westerns when the action stops and we are left to see what happened? After the dust settles? I was listening to an athlete speak of some sort of accomplishment that was achieved by bouncing a ball. The guy was talking about how it hadn't truly sunked in yet but that he would appreciate what he'd done after...the dust settled. And it occurred to me that those of us who do not receive accolades for what we do on a daily basis are sort of always in a state of waiting because the dust never seems to settle. I'm thinking it will settle eventually. At least I hope I'm around to appreciate it. And what will I be thankful for as the dust gathers at my feet? 1). That I did my best. No matter how any of it plays out, and no matter what the situation calls for, the best you can do is all you can ask. It is what we demand of our boys and what we expect of one another around Camp Clifford. After the battle of every day life I'm thi...

So I have a little bit of an understanding on what has been destroying me ever since January. The back and neck are feeling a bit better but the overall cause of sort of everything is the hip and groin pain. Took the medical community quite some time, but it appears that I have a torn labrum in my hip when the guy behind me decided to stop...after he hit me. Wasn't even aware there was a labrum in my hip. Anywho-ha...they figure that it'll have to be fixed with surgery, but you know what? I'm too freaking busy. The hours slide by. I hear the docs in my ear telling me to try and work less. "Get off it," they say. I told the doc he'd have to wait until the Fall. He laughed and called me an animal. 10, 12, 14 hours...rest tomorrow...damn, why does my hip hurt? What-freaking-ever! Yet Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky has been a little dour as of late. "You need something to relax with," my beautiful wife opined the other evening. (There's a g...

Man, did you see the kids berating that school bus aide in the Rochester area? That poor woman took some serious abuse. So much so that they took up a collection in her name to send her on a little vacation. The fund is well over a half a mil now, right? And a bunch of us were talking about it at a wonderful graduation party on Saturday night. I've been called a lot of things in my time. Most of the nicknames I deserved. Some of them made me laugh out loud at myself. I'm not sure that there's anything that you can call me that would bother me enough to ruin my own healthy self-image. Bald? "You can't have hair and brains too." Fat? I know what I eat and how much I enjoy it. There are times in my life when I actually aspired to be fatter because that meant I was eating more. Stupid skinny people will never know the pleasure of eating until pain. It's fun! Stupid? I'll take all of those jokes as well. Usually I get something like ...

So if Sandusky gets just ten years for each of his guilty counts he'll be 518 before he's up for parole. I sort of hope he makes it that long. Because 450 years to sit there and think about what he did seems to me to be a just punishment. It's a difficult crime to imagine. Every time I see him I think just two words - creepy bastard - and I'm not naive enough to think that he was of sound mind, ever. But that's not an excuse. We all know the difference between right and wrong. I'm sure that even criminals do. He certainly did. He warned the kids that his gifts would stop if they told anyone. He threatened, cajoled and bribed them. He most likely ruined each one of them as well. So I don't feel anything other than disdain for the guy. Yet right after the announcement on Friday night I was on Twitter and there were a lot of eye-for-an-eye scenarios being played out. People were hoping that he suffered the same fate by Bubba his cellmate. Or B...

Happy Birthday to a great guy. Today Sam is celebrating his birthday, and I know a lot of people who smile whenever they think of my boy Sam. Pretty much everyone who's had the pleasure of meeting him. You see Sam is a happy guy. He doesn't have violent mood swings. He's always up for a good bet on a game, and he has undying confidence in his abilities to do anything. It's a good bet that on any given night Sam will be right beside me watching the scores change on the full night of baseball games. He'll ride me about a pitcher of mine who's taking a beating, he'll call out every single home run and RBI. And no matter what position his fantasy team is in he'll let me know that it's just a matter of time before he gets into one of the money positions and stays there until the end of the season. And Sam has another thing going for him. Unlike his slow-witted brothers he's a fan of the 27-Time World Champion New York Yankees. Despite ...

One of my buddies was texting me the other day and he mentioned something about my basketball skills. "You're putrid," he said. I had to laugh. I love that word: putrid. And it got me thinking about a lot of other words that I enjoy. In no particular order. Chide, pathetic, cesspool, rancid, panties, sanctify, horrified and annihilated. All right, most of those words sort of fit into the context of something or other...very true adjectives that paint a picture in the mind of the reader or listener. Panties? You ask? Don't ask. Most guys like that word. Here's some more: Psycho, Hyperventilate. Putrid, Humungous, Ambidextrous, Imbecile and Vomatorium Once more I have painted a picture. I like ambidextrous because whenever I hear it I say the same thing: "I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous." (thanks Palmer). And 'imbecile' might be in my top five in a list of words of all time. What words might top those, y...

Let me describe the New York Book Festival Awards Show for you. I got to the airport in Buffalo, made it successfully through security, waited an hour to board the plane, successfully boarded the plane, had a nice chat with the guy next to me about life, and then the plane backed away from the gate. And sat there. For an hour. "There are thunderstorms in New York. Sit back, watch the television and we'll update you in 55 minutes." "I can still make it," I said cheerfully. My new friend and I chatted about the award and the fact that it was Jeff's birthday. He took down my number and promised to order a book. I watched Everybody Loves Raymond . Then I watched another one. The pilot came back over the speaker. "We're gonna' reassess in a half an hour." I turned off Raymond. Another half an hour passed. "How long does it take to go from JFK to the Grolier Club?" I asked the guy. "45 minutes." I f...

Off to NYC today for the awards ceremony for the New York Book Festival. Oh Brother! The Life & Times of Jeff Fazzolari will be honored and I promise to deliver plenty of photos from the big city. The ironic part, of course, that June 22 is also Jeff's birthday, and every single time I think of it, it makes me smile. He sent me a present for his day, I suppose. And the 27-time World Champion Yankees are playing the Mets tomorrow night. I imagine that I'll find a Yankee bar to catch the game in. And I'm thinking a dish of pasta somewhere at one of the gourmet restaurants. You know, where the top chefs perform. I always get fired up about going to New York. I remember being there a few years ago and not wanting to go to sleep because there was just too much going on right outside my window. What am I dreading? The ride from the airport to the hotel. The small hotel room. So many people. A Mets victory? All right, so that one probably won't hap...

Every once in awhile I'll take a stab at the people who post things about immigration on Facebook. (Sorry Cindy, you knew this would have to come up). And it's such a hot button issue that I usually try and steer clear, but what gets me about most of the discussions is that we lose ourselves in half-thoughts on the subject, and the rights of real human beings are trampled upon. Wanna' break it down? Here comes the bleeding heart, right? Well, sort of. I think of the fact that the Fazzolari family is just a few generations removed from swinging over to the promised land. They say that in North Korea you must do hard labor for 12 years to enter the country. In Afghanistan, they shoot you. What was America founded upon? Give us your poor and downtrodden? So lining people up and shooting them at the border because they want a better life seems undignified to me...strictly speaking as an American. "They're taking all our jobs and going on our welfare...

Every night an ugly scene plays out all across the great nation. It's a battle between a coach of a sport and the kid sitting on the bench and the parents who had banked on their little athlete to do some damage. You know, turn pro, against all odds, and take Mommy and Daddy with them when they move into the mansion. I've been on all sides of this issue. I sat on the bench a bit...a lot in soccer where I was happy to be on the bench because I didn't much care for running after a ball that would be rolling by again shortly...and a little in basketball, particularly freshman year when my coach tired of me shooting and I saw little sense in passing it to my worthless teammates. In fact, during that freshman year we were getting trounced by a team and I never saw the hardwood. I had company on the bench though as the class bully had also grown out of favor with the coach. Yet the coach had no idea who he was messing with. Down 75 to 23 with a little over three minutes...

Well. Rodney King didn't get to live to see it. I liked Rodney. You remember him, right? He was the guy who was out on parole and tried to get free of the cops. He took an awful beating and in all respects, he probably deserved a little of it. But you can't do that. Anyway, the riots were a direct result of the not guilty verdicts and Rodney was front and center. He actually tried to steer clear, but came out of hiding to ask the million dollar question. Can we all get along? As Rodney died this weekend, some twenty years later, we are embroiled in another hot button case of a young man dying on the streets. I'm not sure that Trayvon Martin's case will escalate in such unrest and I surely hope not, but the question remains. Can we all get along? And you know what? I don't think we can. I wrote a blog about Trayvon and Zimmerman and I got hate responses for my take which was simply that the guy should have stayed in the car and let the authori...

So my buddy Lance Armstrong, the guy in the top five for biggest douches in the world of Thoughts of a Common Man is back in the news. It seems as if the anti-doping agency has evidence that he's always been a dope. Not only do they have his blood - which shows that there was certain manipulation - they also have about a dozen witnesses who saw him doping. He denies it. So, let's take him for his word. After all he's the only guy who ever beat cancer. Why would the government and the anti-doping agency be against him? Answer me that? I hate when a team wins a championship and the first words out of the mouths of one of the winning players is something along the lines of: "This is for all the doubters and haters out there! It was us against the world and we never stopped believing!!" Why do people have to feel as if the world is against them? Isn't it awful narcassistic of the dopey bike rider and the big doper former Red Sux pitcher Roger Cle...

Sirius Radio is playing a promotion for Father's Day. It's Frank singing Summer Wind . Nancy Sinatra says that she thinks of her dad when she hears the song. Same here, Nancy. And My Dad sang it as good as your Dad. The summer wind came blowin' in From across the sea It lingered there to touched your hair And walked with me All summer long we sang a song Then we strolled on golden sand Two sweethearts and the summer wind Like painted kites Those days and nights went flying by The world was new beneath The blue umbrella sky Then softer than a piper man One day it called to you I lost you to the summer wind The autumn wind and the winter wind They have come and gone [ From : http://www.elyrics.net/read/m/michael-buble-lyrics/summer-wind-lyrics.html ] But still the days those lonely days Go on and on But guess who sighs his lullabies Through nights that never end? My fickle friend, the summer wind Oh, the autumn wind and the winter wind ...

Nik Wallenda was in the area to walk a tightrope across Niagara Falls on Friday night. As I drove around in the morning I listened to a program that discussed the daring walk. I imagined being up above the rushing, charging, violent waters thundering below. It would certainly be difficult to stay on line and make each step steady. Fighting for time on the same program was the story of the surgeon who, to that point, was still believed to be on the loose. He was since found dead, but I thought of him in the context of the man high above the roaring waters on a terribly thin line. "I'm not going to that stupid show," one of the callers to the radio show said. "He's gonna' be tethered. If there ain't no chance of seeing him die, what good is it?" I considered the poor young mother who was gunned down because her life entwined with a man with a truly diseased mind. I thought of the terror of the last few moments of her life. I considered the boom...

The absolute best day of 2011 was the 1st Annual Softball Tourney to benefit Rocco, Johnny and Farrah Fazzolari. We worked hard to put it all together. Jan, Terrie, Kim, Corinne, Pops, Jill, Jeffy, Dave and the Baltimorons...Oh God, I can't even begin to name everyone that made it such a special day. I was on the verge of tears all day...tears of appreciation of a great life. Friends who drove for miles and miles - Terry, Tom, Al....can't even name all of those people either! It's going to be better this year! The sun will shine. The peppers will be better. The baskets will be epic. Bruce will lead the charge. I might even hit one past the pitcher. All right, I can guarantee all but that last one. We are holding the event at the New Oregon Town Park once again. The date of the tourney is August 12th from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The plan really worked well last year as teams came complete or were formed right on the field. Every single nickel earned went to the coll...

When I was 11 years old there was a massive manhunt in our little Town of North Collins because some dirt bag shot a cop, who also happened to be a family friend. As a sensitive, young, writer-to-be, I remember feeling as if my life was some how violated by the act. I couldn't figure out how or why a person could kill another person. Turns out I still can't. I was hustling through the city of Buffalo on Wednesday morning, oblivious to the goings-on just a few blocks from where I was hanging out. There were no reports of the Erie County Medical Center murder on the Howard Stern Show. So how would I know? My beautiful wife telephoned just before ten a.m., and I figured she was just checking in before starting her shift at the...Erie County Medical Center. "Work is locked down," she said. "Someone shot someone and the place is surrounded." I felt a little like I did when I was 11. I'd just been through the Medical Center to review the construc...

Every morning of the school year I wake Jake from sleep by singing him a little song: "Good morning, Jacob, it's time for you to wake-up, put on a little make-up and learn, learn, learn." He hates me for it. And let me tell you, it's getting so I can't even win a battle of wits with him anymore. He's a funny freaking kid and he loves to talk trash. The fact that we don't give it back to him these days is because we're all, frankly, still a little scared of him. You see, Jake came into the world battling. Early, mad and on Friday the 13th. He was so sick for the first couple of years of his life and we didn't even know it. I just thought he was mean. (Her side of the family, of course). He didn't much care for me at all. And fast forward to Sunday when we went out to dinner. He spent the first half an hour giving it to Sam, who is such a happy child that he takes it with a laugh. Then he turned his sights on me. "How man...

I recall a day about ten years ago as I sat in my parents kitchen just chatting with Mom and Dad. We were watching CNN and a news report came on about the pop singer, Madonna. Mom wasn't paying attention, but Dad was. "Watch this," he whispered to me. Then at the top of his voice he said: "That Madonna is beautiful." "Is that what you like? Whores?" My mother called out. "She's a whore!" Dad laughed and I joined it. "What the hell is that about?" I asked. "I mentioned she was good looking," Dad said. "It set her off." Dad would have been all over last night's story. It seems that Madonna took her 53-year old breast out and showed it to the crowd somewhere across the sea. Isn't enough, enough? 30 years ago it would have been front page news. It hardly made a ripple last night. And I kind of don't get why she'd do it. First off, haven't we already seen everything she has?...

Just read that Erin Moran, Joanie from Happy Days and Joanie loves Chachi, is living in a trailer. She's flat broke, she is taking care of an ailing mother and the only money coming in is the result of her husband's check as a worker at Wal-Mart. Damn, that's sad, huh? Wasn't she on television for like 20 years? She was shortcake for crying out loud. Where's the Fonz when you need him? Of course, growing up in the 70's I watched Happy Days every Tuesday night. In fact, it was one of those shows that we all set our television schedules around because in those days, if you missed it, you didn't catch it on the DVR 3 days later. I'm thinking I had a bit of a crush on Joanie. She was no Winny Cooper, mind you, but I certainly didn't want to see her with Chachi...he was everything I wasn't. There's a story going around that the crew from Happy Days didn't receive money when it all went into syndication and while that didn't screw...

I was listening to an author speak the other day at the BEA in New York. He said that he wished that he would have enjoyed his books instead of trying to write the next one. In other words: Celebrate your life instead of trying to understand it. That's what Jeff said to me when I returned from Providence, Rhode Island after I received an award for Nobody's Home . Little did I know that the book that would someday win multiple awards is one that has so little to do with me as an author and so much to do with Jeff as a human being. But you know what? Let's celebrate it a little, huh? Oh Brother! The Life & Times of Jeff Fazzolari won again in the biography category. It's coming off a win in Boston. I want to win again in California later in the year. But I made a single promise to myself when the books were entered in the competitions. I would go celebrate. I will stand in front of the room and tell the funny stories. I will make a group of author...

I've always been a good speller. Even way before spell check and well before the nuns beat my ass with a ruler I've been able to spell most everything correctly. I am blessed with that gift because I read a ton and recognize how words should look. I know a lot of guys, much smarter than me, who don't spell so well. And that's okay. Yet shots such as the one taken above is a pet peeve of mine. How can you take the time to make up a sign and post it in a public space and spell 'losing' as 'loosing'? I'm sorry, but that's a looser. And you see it more often than not. Incidentally when I took my phone out and snapped the photo the clerk behind the desk asked me what I was taking a picture of. "Just the sign," I said. "What's wrong with it?" "I love misspelled words on a sign," I said. The young clerk came around the front and looked. "I don't see anything wrong with it," she said. ...

So what do you think of Mayor Bloomberg's edict that the big sodas and huge slurpee drinks should be banned in an effort to get people slimmed down a bit? There are a lot of people up in arms. It seems a bit intrusive to me, to be honest. Yes, there are some big bastards walking around. Sure, health care costs are out of hand because people are breaking down due to all sorts of sugar-related diseases. But, man, talk about trying to take away all of the choices. We now have taxes on beer and cigarettes that make it almost ridiculous to try and keep killing ourselves. We add a ban on sweet drinks to it, what's next? A tax on greasy brugers and french fries. That's exactly what's next. I don't drink any sort of sweet drinks. I'm not sure that I've had three sodas in a year. I read an article about what it does to the body so I sort of decided against it. Now that I don't drink beer either, I am stuck with just water. I don't do it because I...

Welcome to the world Adalyn Grace! Big baby. Must have been rough for my niece Katie, but all the males out there know that Matt was the poor bastard who did most of the work. And the first thought I had when I was delivered the good news was: Let love give what it gives. Love gives the great moments. The flat-out freaking miracles. I immediately sent Matt a text. I offered a quip that my brother Jeff thought up in the moments after my beautiful wife gave birth to Jake. The words of that first text will stay between us. Jeff's words weren't fit to print, but that quick text was for Matt's benefit, and mine because I wanted to tap into how he felt right at that moment. I wanted to share his joy. The world is different. It doesn't seem so scary. It's filled with love and with the middle name of your new beautiful child: Grace. Just take it. Live it. A month from now, when you're standing in your kitchen, in the middle of the night, wondering if ...

So I needed a ride home from an injection in my back. Being that Kathy had to work and since Matt is entrenched in Camp Clifford, we decided that we'd have to get the boy up five hours before he usually rises to accompany me. We didn't talk much on the way there as we listened to Howard. I pointed out all the cars on the road at the early hour. "These people are headed off to work," I chided. (I used that word for Kim). "They're stupid," Matt responded. The injections were a lot of fun. A bit of numbness, not a lot of pain. The doc seemed anxious to move on to the next guy in the row of chairs. He promised answers soon, handed me a slip of paper that told me not to go immediately back to work as I wanted to, and we were on our way. "How do I get back to the Thruway?" Matt asked. "You've lived here for 19 years," I said. "I never come up this way." "Follow the signs to 290 East," I said. He m...

We sort of got tricked there, didn't we? The sun shining and the high temps had us all dreaming of a summer that stretched from May thru November. We gotta' find something to bitch about, right? Speaking of which: I read through the juror statements from the Dr. Death trial here in Buffalo. It still really bugs me. The jurors didn't hear the whole story. They didn't really understand why they were there, if you ask me, and I blame CSI and all the other shows on television. They became a part of the story. They got tripped up in the details. The one's who are judging shouldn't be the lead story. Plain and simple. The action should dictate the result. Man hits girl. Girl dies. Man is responsible and that equals man being held responsible. It's easy to get lost in the trees, I guess. No one is really responsible is hard for me to understand. If OJ could be set free when there was a gallon of her blood in his truck anything can happen. And speaki...

I took a big hunk of meat out of the freezer for our Saturday dinner. As I marinated the perfectly cut sirloin tip roast I thought of the "new white meat," as Pops called it: Human flesh. Yep! Human flesh! It's all the rage. There was a guy on a bus in Winnipeg. Then we had the man in New York, the dude in Florida, and the man who fried up his roommate in Maryland. He stuck with the organs though - brain and heart. He better watch that, it might present itself in the form of gout, and gout is painful. Are you freaking kidding me? People eating other people? "Did you hear about the zombies?" Jake asked me. My poor boy looked a little nervous as he relayed the story of the Miami crime. "Could there really be zombies?" Sometimes your children ask you to make sense of things for them. It's hard to do when things are totally nonsensical. I took the opportunity to bring up the bath salts problem that seems to be one of the problem...

I work with a guy who's read all of my books. I've known him for 15 years or so and he always says the same thing whenever he buys one of the new books: "Are there any sex scenes in here?" "No," I answer. "I try to write clean because my mother reads every word." "Tell her to stop reading them," he'll say. "I need some porn." Now why he wants me to write sex scenes is a little disturbing, but I take it he is just being funny. I hope so because I can't write them. First off, I'm a good Catholic boy...a long-time altar boy (leave it alone...the priests were always kind), and I'm not comfortable describing such a scene anyway. Besides, I can't get too graphic...the scenes would be way too quick and filled with laughter. But I may be missing out here because the book 50 Shades of Grey has sold a billion freaking copies and from what I know about it, and what I've heard read, it's an endless ...

For Uncle Jim: Miss you every day. June the 2, Pork Chops, Billy Joel & Greatness When I lost my brother my Dad and my Uncle Jim made sure that they stepped in to make up for some of the loss by calling me and telling me they were thinking about me. When Dad passed, Uncle Jim, his own heartbroken worked even harder to touch base. We talked Yankees, food, the Ria sisters (Gonna and Dia), and how much we missed our brothers. Uncle Jim got pretty sick, really fast. We lost him this morning. He will most likely get to heaven before the pasta is served. If life is fair, there will be pork chops in the sauce today. My Uncle loved pork chops. I'm talking, he dreamed of them sometimes. He'd call me late in the afternoon and ask me what I was having for dinner. We shared dinner quite a few times...not enough though. He loved his family even more. Uncle Jim would call me the day before my birthday. Every year. He said he wanted to be the first one to wish me a great d...

Alix Rice was just 18. Her major crime was to go out and skateboard on a street where a drunken driver decided to stop paying attention and sent her airborne to her death. When she hit the sidewalk all of her dreams were gone. Alix was a trumpet player, a daughter, a friend, a niece, a sister, a granddaughter, a cousin and just a kid. She had every right to look forward to a lot more days. Alix loved Lady Gaga. She probably loved a lot of other things too...we didn't hear a lot about her because the person she met on that dark road dominated the news... ...and it was all about him. An accomplished man. A husband, a doctor, a golfer, a drinker, a texter, a bad driver in those conditions, and finally a liar, an evader and a P.O.S. as the kids might call him. Because when he sent Alix flying through the air, he immediately thought of himself. He's never stopped thinking of himself, actually. Dr. Death as he will be called throughout immediately began to do what he needed t...