Thoughts of a Common Man

1). Eat more red meat - what the hell am I supposed to do? I still have those big porterhouse steaks in the freezer. 2). Root for the Yankees - Everyone is saying that this is the year when they really hit the skids. Don't bet on it. They're the 27-Time World Champion-greatest-franchise-in-the-history-of-sports. Your Yankees, My Yankees, everybody's Yankees!!! 3). Be more patient . I don't even have the time to finish that one. 4). Don't Sweat the Petty Things - There's a lot of time wasted in worrying about things that don't happen. That's a proven fact. I've made strides in being much more calm in my daily life. Gotta' keep going. 5). Don't Pet the Sweaty Things - It's a good thing for me that my beautiful wife isn't sweaty. I don't have a lot to say here, just wanted to get a George Carlin line in somewhere in the list of resolutions. 6). Don't Yell Back at the Kids - when they tell me that the Bills are goin...

I've never been to London. Chances are I won't ever get there either, but Oh Brother! The Life & Times of Jeff Fazzolari will be there. And it will be honored there, and it's a funny thing, really because the other day I was talking to my doctor who is a really intelligent guy who is really great at his job, and he made me laugh because he said: "I've always wanted to be a writer." We chatted about the awards that have been piling up for me lately and how odd being recognized in such a manner is. "It doesn't matter to me," I said. "I really just want Jeff's name front and center at all of these shows." "That is the goal," he said, "but think of this as well, you're being recognized by your peers. Did you ever think that was possible when you were writing your first sentence down 30 years ago?" "I'm still not sure that matters," I said. He laughed. "How many awards n...

RIP to Don Ingram. My cousin Maryann is a beautiful soul. She has lived a great life where love is the sense most felt. So it is a certain profound loss when someone leaves that inner circle of love. I can't imagine it, but Maryann lost her husband, Don, who was a good man and a talented musician, and lover of the good music. No Drake or Nelly there. Beautiful music. And it pains me to think that Maryann is going to have to work to find that ever-present smile that she always sends out to the world. Her laugh is what makes a lot of music in our family, and so when she hurts, of course we all hurt. Being an adult sucks because there are so many times when we are confronted with mortality. Don was way too young to go. Jeff was way too young to go. Jan was too young to go. Uncle Jim should have had twenty more years. Dad should have lived longer. Aunt Carolyn went too soon. Yet it's a crap shoot. We get a certain number of days, a finite number of breaths, and what day...

Woke to the news of another person being pushed into an oncoming subway train in NYC. Read the report on the funeral of the firefighters who were gunned down near Rochester by some raving lunatic. Followed that up with some news about a woman who posed as the aunt to one of the victims of the Newtown shooting. She was collecting money that was donated for one of the kids. Then there was the news of the high taxes as we roll over that damn Cliff. The Yankees still don't have a right-fielder who can hit from the right side of the plate. I headed to a job site. There were about ten masons in the trailer drinking coffee. One of them was on his phone when he announced that three cops had been shot at the police station in New Jersey. Gun control was discussed. "We need the Wild West," one guy said. "If everyone had a gun there'd be more fear." "I vote for a hanging, once a week, in the public square," another guy said. "We can sell ...

I'm not sure that there was a bigger superstar in sports at the end of the 1950's and thru most of the 1960's. Mickey Mantle was the face of the Yankees, the face of baseball and a legend - while he played. He ran like a deer, slugged like a steroid freak - before anyone was taking steroids - and he won World Series after World Series. He also drank too much, ran around with women and treated them like dirt, barely was a father to his children, and was mean to the people on the streets. He was entitled, childish and downright nasty to even his friends and his family. But there was so much more to the story. I am just finishing up reading The Last Boy about his days and his death. I've laughed hard at some of the antics with Billy Martin and Whitey Ford and the rest. Mickey: How's that spot on your liver? Billy: Now, I got a little liver on my spot. I've marveled at his baseball skills. He hit a ball clear out of Washington's Stadium. Tha...

I know every emotion that Syd's parents are going through. I am aware of all of the fears associated with entrusting people who were strangers to take care of my child. You see, Syd is a young girl who is in a battle for her health. She's being treated at the Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo. Her family is enduring the sort of heartbreak that must be a main staple of what they serve in purgatory. To Leslie and Barb...and fifty others...stay strong. Faith, love, hope and strong are the words that the family needs right now, so I'm writing this in an effort to beg them to stay the course. There are so many ups and downs when battling an illness. It's the only way through. I remember feeling as if the outside world just didn't matter and staring in wonderment at folks who were complaining about things that had little importance in the grand scheme of things. I recall feeling the love of the nurses who stood up and did way more than what was...

It just might be that Jack Klugman was my favorite actor of all-time. Better than DeNiro, better than Pacino, even better than Nicholsan. With the possible exception of James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano nobody played a better part than Klugman did when he was Oscar Madison, and I'm telling you, he was the number one reason why I wanted to be a writer. When the Buffalo News interviewed me and did the longest feature story of my writing career - 18 years ago - this is the quote that appeared under my photo: Growing up I wanted to be Oscar Madison. I wanted to eat like a pig, dress like a slob, and write things people want to read. I've achieved two out of three and my writing career is picking up steam. And I still love to watch the show. They run it every now and again on TV Land and I wait for the episode when Felix and Oscar are robbed and tied up in chairs in the kitchen. They start to make faces to get each other to laugh and Klugman just had the perfect face. I l...

Have a great one! These are your kingdom of days. Enjoy them with those you love. Celebrate your life!!

Christmas is certainly different once the children have grown beyond the age of belief in Santa. "You better be good," I chided Sam the other day. "Santa is watching." "Santa is sitting on the couch, watching Judge Judy and sipping water," he answered. "Santa put on a few pounds," Jake chimed in. Little bastards. And it's weird, but despite the fact that the entire time when the kids were little goes by in a blur of sleep deprivation and frenzied mind cramps, some of the excitement of the season is gone. Last year I figured that it was all because I hadn't stepped foot into a store to buy gifts, so I set aside one day to do it this year. It wasn't that. Shopping sucks. They are tracking Santa on the Internet now. I just read a couple of tweets about how the trip started at 2 a.m. and that this year he has a cell phone with him so kids can reach out. I'm sure that friggin' thing will ring just as he's gl...

I can't believe that it's been 25 years. I had completed college but the world didn't come chasing after me. I was working as a writer for a now-defunct magazine in Niagara Falls. Even though I had always wanted to be a writer I hated the job. I hated wearing a tie. I didn't want to be told what to write. Deadlines sucked. Writing sentences without the word sucked in it sucked, and the pay really sucked. "You should come out here with me," my Dad said as I told him my troubles over the telephone. "Now that you have a degree I can help you get a job in the offices. You'll be around construction, and we'll have fun here." Did I still need my Dad to find me a job? Hadn't he done enough for me through the years? Wasn't it time to man up a little? Three days later I was in West Haven, Connecticut. I had driven my black Capri out there and Dad had immediately put me to work in the payroll department. I got the chance to see him wo...

I was woken from a sound sleep last night by the lyrics of the song, Jingle Bell Rock in my head. Now I'm not much of a Christmas song guy, and hate most of the tunes, but that one is particularly bothersome, and I'm not sure where I heard it and why it woke me at 3:11 on Friday morning, but there I was, with my phone in my hand, looking up the lyrics. There is something seriously wrong with the guy who wrote that song: Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock jingle bells swing and jingle bells ring snowing and blowing up bushels of fun now the jingle hop has begun. What the F are you smoking???? Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock jingle bells chime in jingle bells time dancing and prancing in jingle bell square in the frosty air. Dancing and prancing in jingle bell square? Seriously?? What a bright time, it's the right time to rock the night away Jingle bell time, it's a swell time to go gliding in a one-horse sleigh Giddy-up jingle...

2012 Darwin Awards “ Gotta love this year's winner!!! Nominee No. 1: [San Jose Mercury News]: An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girl friend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his head. Nominee No. 2: [Kalamazoo Gazette]: James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) of Alamo, MI, was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police describe as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft." Nominee No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record]: Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, NC. Awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson 38 Special, ...

So the Mayan calender ends tomorrow, huh? To hear the Mayans tell it they never thought that it would mark the end of days, but there are most likely people out there (given the raving lunatics that are running around) who believe that we are all doomed. I might as well hedge my bets. If this is indeed my last post I have to wonder what the hell I'll be doing when the great fireball scorches the Earth. I'll most likely be sitting with one of the boys, talking about who the hell is gonna' play right field at the stadium this year. Either that or I'll be listening to my beautiful wife explain what happened during her work day. Or I'll be singing one of my songs to one of my dogs. Melky is my buddy, Melky is my girl. Melky is my buddy, she hates the stupid squirrel. Or I'll be listening to my boys chatter about the Bills and how if they can just draft Joe Namath in his prime they'll go 16 and 0 and shock the world. And if any of those thin...

So we are approaching the fiscal Cliff and the dire predictions say that milk prices will double, oil prices will rise, the mortgage exemption for taxes will be nullified and taxes will go up, across the board for those of us who actually pay them. Other than that...not a lot will change. I'm not much into economics. I turned all of the family finances over to my beautiful wife and while it appears there's a real disconnect between the upper class of the family (wifey and college boy), the middle class (15-year-old and 12-year old hoodlums) and those of (me) on the poverty line, we're doing okay. I think. (It's hard to get a lot of information about the state of the books from the higher tier). Yet I don't much bother with it. Socks without holes in the toes are all I really require, and I like the freezer filled in case we are trapped in the house for too long. Still, it's hard not to worry about something that we don't quite understand, right? ...

A couple of things happened over the weekend. First off, I couldn't take sitting around not being a part of the world. I decided to forego a portion of my rest my sore tendon. I got up off the couch and headed to work. I just couldn't take what I was seeing on the news and feeling in my heavy heart. Just too much. I headed for the convenience store and my daily chat with a real nice lady who collects my money for the papers. I pointed to the headline about the president's speech on Sunday night. She started crying. I thought of my wife crying as Obama read off the names of the children. I thought of the Bruce song: This is a prayer for the souls of the departed, those who've gone and left their parents broken-hearted. Their lives over before they got started. This is a prayer for the souls of the departed. My boy was still waiting in the driveway for his bus to come. I wanted to grab him and hug him, but he's 15. He might have kneed me in a bad spot...

My brother Jim is in the East Coast region of the country trying to help fix up some of the damage from Hurricane Sandy. He's working unbelievably long hours out in the cold, leading large charges of men as they work to get people back into their homes. We couldn't have possibly sent a better man, from this region, to help with the job. You see, for years and years around these parts Jim is the guy we all think of when something goes wrong with something that we own. The circle widened from our family to a bunch of other families and before long Jim's life became secondary to what we all needed. Because he's so damn good and so willing to give. A few weeks ago my mother was asking me about something that had gone wrong around her house. The conversation didn't go very far because Mom knew that I couldn't possibly help her, I knew that I couldn't help her, and when I suggested to 'take a look' we both laughed. "What the hell happened to...

If it's possible to place a cloud over the head of every American citizen it seems that a deranged kid did it. The weekend was a strange collection of seconds that seemed to pulse with the dread that perhaps we had turned a corner into an abyss so dark and dreary that we may never recover. These were little kids who were gunned down. Children with the faces of angels, untouched by the pain of having lived, but unable to have tried. And it was too much to comprehend, and too senseless to fight about. After a certain amount of grieving it was time to take a deep breath and understand that no amount of arguing about whether or not guns should be readily available without check was going to help. In fact, all that could help was once again inside and around me. My own personal love and life was the only way through. And in that moment of resignation that evil is all around us and won't likely be stopped no matter how much gnashing of the teeth that I do, I considered that ...

There's just too much hate out there. We hate each other's political beliefs. We hate each other's sports teams. We hate the opinions you hold and we hate you for not loving ours. We hate someone infringing upon rights we believe we've earned. We hate the guy who spreads the message to not hate. We breed hate. We nurture it and we spread it like manure until the hate erupts, and then we hate the people who hate to tell us what caused the hate. People hate me because I hate senseless slaughter of five-year-olds and try to bring up the lack of love in a hateful sphere of unintelligible comments. And I hate that. The answer is so obviously the opposite of hate, but we can't even bring ourselves to say it. We'd rather be angry. And we hate the guy who did this and we'll hate the next one too, but instead of banding together, we'll spew more hate towards those who don't think like you. Civility is gone. Frank discussions of moving fo...

There's no way to make sense of what happened in Connecticut, but there's every reason to believe that it can happen again. And again. And again. And again. 61 mass murders in the last 20 years in our beautiful country. And next time it may be in your little town. Because there's no real interest in stopping it. There's too much money to be made. It's the price we pay for freedom, right? More guns would stop it? Are you kidding me? Yes, we're all sick over the senseless loss of life. But that's not enough. We need to fix it. Do we honestly need these guns available? We aren't playing Halo out there. Just horrific. I'm ashamed to be a member of this species sometimes. I really am.

Who knows what to expect when all of your Rock & Roll heroes are older than 60 years old? Would Mick and the boys do all right? Would Daltrey hit the high notes? Will McCartney get married again backstage? Can Bon Jovi do a decent job of standing next to Bruce? The show was unreal. Bruce started the show, of course. He doesn't follow anyone so I knew it would go that way. He didn't disappoint. My boy Sam came into the room to check on why the television was so loud. "Sit with me," I said. He watched Bruce do My City of Ruins . As Bruce sang, With these hands, I pray Lord. Sam glanced at me. "He has the whole place praying," he said. "He's pretty good." When Roger Waters hit the stage I was a little unprepared for how much I love his music too. (He was following Bruce, by the way), but Waters was powerful and The Wall still resonates with me even if I didn't smoke pot to listen to it. Other notes? Alicia Keyes is beaut...

Catching up on all the news fit to print. My son passed me in the kitchen yesterday and said: "Nine more days until the end of the world." He was shocked when I responded with: "Whatever." 1). The Yankees signed another member of the Boston Suck Sox World Series team. Oh how I hated Kevin Youkilis and now he's gonna' be wearing the pinstripes. I will hate him every time he doesn't get a hit which will be about 7 out of every ten times. The other three times he will be barely tolerable. 2). Bruce and the Stones played together for the hurricane relief effort on 12/12/12. It's a good thing I didn't go. My head might have exploded. My two favorite acts. 3). The leg rehab is a funny thing. I can't believe that people can get used to not doing anything. I have been trying my best to stay off it and certainly haven't climbed anything in two weeks, but despite the fact that I've wanted to keep my mind busy there is a great impu...

If we could shrink the earth's population If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be: 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south 8 would be Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 89 would be heterosexual 11 would be homosexual 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States. 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition (ONE)1 would be near death; (ONE)1 would be near birth; (ONE)1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education; (ONE)1 (yes, only 1) would own a computer. When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, un...

I must be confused when it comes to the meaning of the word tragic. I find it tragic that a child gets sick. Yet I'm not sure I'd put the tragedy label on when a guy drives drunk and kills his passenger. I find it tragic that a mother loses a child during pregnancy. The tragedy of shooting a woman and then yourself is sort of lost on me. Am I thinking too much into this? I bring all of this up because I saw a Dallas Cowboy get interviewed after their stirring win yesterday and he mentioned that he had no right to question 'God's Plan'. So God was responsible for the downing of shots and the getting behind the wheel and crashing and flipping? God planned that? Did He put a trip-wire in the road? On a daily basis, as a safety dude, I walk around and watch men put themselves in compromising positions for the sake of, what, I don't know. I once investigated the death of a man who went over 60 feet to the concrete below. He had everything he nee...

I've always been an orderly sort of person. Not Felix Unger, mind you, as my public persona is more Madison-like, but everything has to be in its place. I bring this all up because when you live with people who don't quite feel that everything has a place, you are in for a long day... ...of trying to put everything in its place! I'm off of work for a little while as I try to get the tendon in my hip to stop being inflamed. I've been struggling with it for 10 months now, and to be honest I've received about 20 shots in the hip, I've tried anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxers and deep tissue massages. I golfed once this past year and that was pretty much a disaster (other than the company and the bologna sandwich). The hip is structurally good, but there's the problem of lifting the leg...even a couple of inches off the ground. So, home I am. And I may just have to suffer with the bad hip and return quickly to work because I have a family here ...

There are days when I get excited about things. Unfortunately those days are few and far between as I get older, but that's because the things that used to fire me up seem a little too tiresome now. Not going to the market day, though. We were out of steak. That's a problem in our house because my kids really like steak. Perhaps we would have been better off not introducing them to it, but man, there's nothing like a good Porterhouse. I headed to Elk Provision on Clinton Street in Buffalo. That's our place, and it has been since we were kids. I know all of the butchers. When I get through the door I hear one thing over and over. "Hey Fuzzy!" You see, my Dad might have been the best customer of all back thirty or forty years ago. I was talking with my brother Jim as I hit the door. He seemed excited for me. I went into the freezer and picked out my own short loin and then watched as one of my buddies cut it into perfect, huge steaks. Twenty ...

The old Rod Stewart song comes to mind. When I was young I honestly thought he was singing every picture tells a story, donut . Couldn't figure out what the hell the donut was all about. Nice photo above, huh? I didn't actually pose for that. I wish I looked that good when I dressed up. The damn thing was photo-shopped somehow and I laugh hard every time one of my buddies does that to me. Jeffy Renaldo is a master at it. Chris is even more creative. Yet I was thinking about it in the context of the Jeter picture that showed him out-of-shape. The NY Post went with a shot of the Captain looking like the captain of our Lions softball team. Turns out it wasn't true. "I thought it was pretty funny," Jeter said. He even liked the headline Derek Eater. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Someone can take a shot of you and put it in all sorts of compromising positions. (Really, someday ask me to take a look at the work Jeffy did with my face an...

Costas was wrong about one thing: The forum he chose to discuss the things he was right about. And before the heads pop off of every pro-gun guy in the nation let me explain two things: I'm not talking about taking away your right to own a gun. Costas wasn't talking about taking away people's rights to own a gun. Unless the person doesn't have the mental capacity to own a gun. Do you see the distinction? Before you tell me that guns don't kill people and that spoons can't make you fat, listen for one minute, would you? There are too many people dying in the moment when a person who legally bought a gun decides that the gun is his way out of his problem. It is a fixable problem. If we can talk about it. Yet the anger over what Costas said is reason to believe that there will never be a discussion on it. Never. Since I think this is a decent forum to discuss the debate, let's go. 1). I would hope that all would agree that people be...

As many of you know this blog is about my big mouth, the Yankees, Faith, Bruce, and family. Not in that order. (Well, big mouth might be first). But today this is a fun blog to write because it's about one of the best people that you or I will ever meet. My sister Corinne. She's gonna' be pissed that Bruce appeared in the blog before she did, but she shares one thing with the man who's voice grates on her. She gets it. She understands what love is. She is generous of time and spirit, and she's always been a real pisser. The one thing that stands out about my sister is embedded in my mind these days. Despite all that has happened to hurt her heart, the image that always comes to mind is a hearty laugh... ...that she shares with her little accomplice, my boy Sam. Corinne and Sam need to be separated when we go out to dinner because they will explode in laughter that won't stop for a good hour. (I have a sneaking suspicion that I may be the ta...

As a two-time winner at the New England Book Festival I was invited to participate this year as a presenter. I mulled it over, knowing that I'd have the chance to tell my story again, but I wasn't sure that I really wanted to change out of sweatpants. Then something hit my heart. A young girl from my hometown received some tough medical news, and soon enough her Mom started posting heartbreaking updates online. Syd and Leslie are certainly in a lot of people's prayers these days. And it got me thinking about some of the great people I met when I was writing House of Miracles from Doctor Caty to Olivia Stockmeyer - the beautiful girl in the photo above - and I thought why not? Let's enter House of Miracles in the festival. I plan on telling those gathered about my brother. I plan on making them all laugh a little, but at the same time, I want to talk about the Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo. I have living proof of their work running around ...

Every single time I think about wrapping a gift for someone...which I rarely do...because it ends with me trying to rip tape off my elbows...I think of my dear mother. You see, Mom wrapped a million presents, and I might not be kidding. There were so many gifts for all of us under the tree, every year, and now she wraps hundreds for the grand kids. But you see, what really gets me about it was the present I saw under her tree one year. I may have mentioned it before. The tag read: "To Jeter, Love Santa." Jeter is not the shortstop for the Yankees in this case. He's the dog! Did he unwrap it? Did he read it first? Did he comprehend who the f&*k Santa was in the scheme of things? Or did he figure it out and understand that Santa was actually Mom who isn't really his Mom but treats him as such? Oh, I'm so confused. Yet I thought of it this morning because I had my daily chat with the nice woman at the gas station as I grabbed my newspaper. ...

Perhaps things would be better for all concerned if those who are contemplating murder-suicide would start with the suicide. The coverage of the death of KC football player Jovan Belcher was aggravating at best. The talking heads didn't know how to treat the situation and I swear if I would've heard one more person tell me what a great guy he was I would've thrown something through the television. He murdered the mother of his infant child because she was late coming home from a concert. I don't care if he could tackle. I don't care if he volunteered once to talk to a sick kid. I don't want to hear from his high school coach who talked about how great a character Jovan had as a young man. He took a gun and shot her multiple times with the kid, reportedly, nearby. End of story. Now we get to see his jersey hanging in the locker room? Now we get to hear that his teammates wanted to wear his number on their sleeves to honor him? Suddenly, now, i...

Admit it. There was a moment there after you threw down your money for the ticket where you let your mind wander. Wasn't there? My buddy and I tossed around a few ideas for spending that much dough. I don't want for too much in this life. I ain't into clothes despite the fact that all consider me a snappy dresser. I don't wear one piece of jewelry and only own two if you count the wedding ring I've worn about three times. I love food but I can make the best pasta dish you've ever had for less than $20. I don't really want to travel anywhere as I'm not keen on leaving the country and I've already seen most of the United States. Bruce keeps his concert ticket prices low and there'd be too much time and travel involved for getting seats to watch a sports team I like. "We'd do a lot of golfing," Pops said. "I still can't swing a club," I answered. I thought about it for a moment. "I'd get...

I happened to wander by one of the hoodlums doing his homework the other night. I wandered by because Sam was on my computer and he was handling the difficult aspect of the assignment by slamming his hands down and yelling when he got the wrong answer. "What's up?" "I'm trying to do my math homework," he said. Then it hit him. "You think you're a genius, why don't you try one?" "First off," I said. "I don't think I'm a genius, I am a genius. Secondly, I already passed third grade." "I'm in 7th, genius," he said. I sat down at the computer. The word problem was dealing with percentages and I tried to read it as he danced in a circle next to me talking about the Bills. "Dude!" "Shhhh," he said. "The genius is concentrating." I hate word problems. I always think of the guy on the bus and three people getting off and what's the bus driver's nam...

How much more proof do we need that drunk-driving is bad? The photo of the Dad on the cover of the Buffalo News and the story about how he is coping after the loss of his daughter should be ENOUGH to stop every single person who wants to drink and drive from drinking and driving. But does it? Uh, nope. The next day. The very next day someone plows into a crossing guard in front of a school. We've had about 70 buildings hit by cars in the last two years. WTF? I realize that it is awfully short-sighted on my part believing that we can eliminate the problem all together, but man we can do better then set bail for the driver of the car in the fatal accident at just twenty grand, can't we? Last year we had a doctor get away with murder when he high-price lawyered it up and lied his way out. Now, confession time... ...when we were young the drunk-driving awareness had not yet taken hold. As teenagers we drove around before, after and while drinking beer. The times w...