Thoughts of a Common Man

This past week one of my children expressed frustration about life in general. He was sort of up against it and his expectations didn't meet his reality when it came to a social function at school. Just one of those things. And it frustrated him. As a parent it's awful difficult to watch your child be upset about anything. We spend a lot of time shielding them and I know that my beautiful wife and I want nothing but smooth sailing for them through the years. Yet it won't happen. Around that same time Kathy and I settled in for an episode of Breaking Bad from season 3 (we're making good time) and the episode, at first glance, seemed to be a throw away type of show about the two main characters chasing a fly around their lab. (I won't spoil anything if you're just getting started, Kim). Every single sentence brought me closer to the feeling that it not only wasn't a throw away episode, but that it was so profound. Walter expresses discomfort in t...

Then she sneezed again. My companion. Then the dog cried. Then she blew her nose. Sneeze. Blow the nose. Sneeze. Blow the freaking nose! "So where you from?" she asked. Her diseased face just inches from mine. I crumpled into a ball beside her and turn my head to the window. "Buffalo," I muttered. I held my book up to cover my face. I thought about making a mask out of the freaking (not the real word) puke bag. "Do you like to travel?" she asked. She sneezed. Coughed. And might've farted. All I could think was that I needed to crack a window. Not a bright idea at 35,000 feet but it was tempting. "I hate traveling," I said. I almost added "NOW!" and "BECAUSE OF YOU." I really wanted to tell her that I hated her and that I knew why her dog was crying. He wanted out! He wanted to get away from her. Sneeze, cough, sneeze. The tissue she was using was just a tiny piece of paper....

Did you know that Kansas City is about three miles from Kansas? Or about ten miles from Iowa? Or about twenty miles from Nebraska? The mile markers might not be right, but I was in all of those states in a real short time. When I saw the sign that said "WELCOME TO IOWA" I about pissed myself. "IOWA?" I yelled to the car. Then when I was just East of Omaha Bob Seger's Turn the Page came on. On a long and lonesome highway East of Omaha "I'm on that highway!" I screamed. And let me tell you...it's long and lonesome. Old Bob wasn't lying. Mile after mile passed. I was begging to see a freaking (word substitution) cow somewhere along the way. I tried calling home. Sam was a wise ass. Glad I'm missed. And I drove on. Mile after mile. I arrived in Omaha, visited a site, and then due to the worst planning in the history of the world, drove back to Kansas City. Mile after mile. "Just give me a freaking (see ...

The cool part about visiting a new city is that everything is unfamiliar. It's also the aggravating part. I used the GPS to highlight the route to the job and immediately got lost. I called the contact and he gave me directions as if I had lived there all my life. "You know where the little blue highway starts?" "Are you freaking kidding me? The little blue highway?" "Where are you now?" he asked. "I have no freaking idea (freaking subbing for another word)." Let me tell you, the heartland is mostly field. And strip mall. And field. And convenient store. And field. "I'm by a field." "And a McDonalds." Thankfully he knew the place. I visited the site and got back into the car hours later. I had no plan other than steak. (Pops had planted the seed with a text earlier in the day). And I drove aimlessly. I saw George Brett way. He's my favorite non-Yankee player ever. I drove by and parke...

Some people think it's cute to travel. While I enjoyed Kansas City there were certainly some issues in getting there and doing the job. On Sunday I boarded the plane in Baltimore (after a short layover) and due to the fact that I was in the C group, I was not really blessed with the prime choice of seats. I headed for the back row. (Perhaps no one would join me). But noooooooo...... A reasonably attractive female sat next to me. There were three seats. She didn't choose the one on the end and leave the middle one empty. She sat right next to me. A bit odd despite the fact that I'm a wildly attractive man. A moment later a man approached. "Is this seat taken?" He asked the woman. "No, please," she said. The guy sat down and immediately the two of them began making small talk. Flirting, actually. It was a wee bit uncomfortable. The guy then took out a deck of cards. "Do you play gin rummy?" he asked his new friend. ...

There were three siblings there. Mom was in the center. One nephew and a newcomer were listening to the stories...and shaking their heads, laughing. "I really could tell Dad stories for a long time," I said. We were working in San Francisco. Dad had gone out of his way to help a young, overweight girl who worked in the office. The girl was always bitter, forever doubtful of her own abilities, and was a considerable mess. She'd miss work. She'd eat way too much at lunch, and she was forever complaining, but Dad wanted to help her gain some confidence. So we'd pick her up each day and drive her into work. I remember whining to Dad about it. "Why can't she find her own way to work?" "Why does she do nothing but complain?" But Dad was steady. She was a young kid. "She needs a break in life," he said. One morning we got to the spot in front of her own beat up apartment where we'd pick her up. She wasn't there....

A shot of Hitler as a baby. They say that a photo is worth a thousand words and I sort of stopped dead in my tracks looking at this one. He looks like a regular baby, right? Knowing what we knew as his life played out, it makes you wonder about who snapped the shot and then completely blew the parenting. A Mom and her child after the bombs in Japan. This shot was supposedly taken 4 days later. When I looked at it, I wondered about the destruction. I recalled being in history class as a kid and being so proud of the fact that no one messes with the United States. We forget about the absolute destruction and that real people are over there, right? And real people over here as well. Having lived through September 11, I know the pain in the hearts of citizens not even directly involved in the scene. Yet we were all directly involved in this. It's funny, but I can't watch the movies made, or the photos taken in real time. My heart and mind don't allow it. Every single ph...

And Dana's boyfriend. And Kathy's boyfriend. Of course Bruce is 64 today. Sixty-freaking-four. And I know it because a lot of the women in my life are very aware of the fact that Bruce still looks pretty good. Last week some shots of him on a beach in Rio showed up on Twitter. My beautiful wife stared at the photo longer than she's looked at me in the last ten years. All that and a billion dollars. Yet it has always been sort of funny as these poor women have actually thought about it for a long time. My sister Carrie refers to Bruce as her boyfriend. My sister-in-law has absolute venom in her heart for Bruce's real wife. Dana can't even look at Patty without feeling rage. And my wife? She had never seen Bruce in concert when I met her. She's now seen him at least 15 times. We were seated behind the stage for one show and I was a little disappointed with the last minute ticket. "I don't mind looking at his ass for 3 and a hal...

I was reading a quote from Springsteen the other day. He was speaking about his failures in the school system all those years ago. Bruce explained that he always felt lost in the classroom and that he knew he wasn't an idiot, but that he just didn't fit in, and he had little interest in what they were trying to make him commit to memory. He learned more from a 3 minute record than he ever learned in school. And it got me thinking. I never struggled much in school. I was a great reader, a good speller, and I could memorize everything. I always did real well on the standard tests and on the regents exams. I sort of thought that the people who struggled were in some ways a bit slower. What a naïve take that was! As I've moved out into the world I've learned that the way that they measure intelligence in school is sort of slanted away from some really brilliant people. There are ironworkers and carpenters and laborers and garbage men who have way more smar...

I was driving all across New York State the other day and after visiting the site I decided to get a bit more comfortable for the long drive. I pulled into a parking area along Route 10 in a really small town. Think a home every mile or so. The driving area was quiet. There was just one other car there. I saw a guy about the same age as me working on putting down the canvas lid on the back of a broken down, red pick-up truck. Think Fred G. Sanford's truck. There were stickers all over the back of the truck. Pro-gun, Anti-Obama deals. I was rustling around the back of my truck looking for a pair of shorts I could change into when I felt something wet on my left arm. I looked down to see a hound dog looking like he wanted to jump into the back of my vehicle. Dogs love me. I patted the top of his head and he wagged his tail. "Come here, dog!" the guy called out. "He's not bothering me," I said. The dog sauntered away. "Oh, he's li...

So we are in season 3 of Breaking Bad . We've watched about 20 episodes in a couple of weeks, and let me tell you, I'm still pretty fascinated with the whole story. One of the problems in developing characters is being able to sustain them for the entire piece. I taught creative writing for a few years and let me tell you, that was the biggest problem that many gifted writers had. Yet when you get it right, in your mind, as a writer, the story sort of writes itself. But those characters must be alive. I wrote Waldorf & Juli back in 1993. 21 years later I would still be able to pick Juli out of a crowd at a Buffalo Bills game. She was alive. I was Waldorf, of course, in the story so it was easy to stay true to his character, but as I was writing, I followed the path of the story by knowing what Juli would say in any given situation. "That's a little crazy," my beautiful wife told me at the time. "She's only in your head." I bring al...

Sometimes there is a line in the news that just makes you stop and grieve along with a family who you don't even know. A young boy died after suffering a head injury in a football game. The kid's photo has been all over the news the past few days and the community is in absolute mourning. There isn't a parent alive who doesn't feel that pain. How could there be? The conversation about possibly playing football lasted less than a minute in our house. Jake: Can I play football? Kathy: No. And I'm not of the mindset to condemn any parent who allows their child to play the game. It's not about whether or not the game is safe to play because there are millions of kids playing it and there is an eye on safety. Hell, even the NFL is addressing it on an annual basis. And there are plenty of other activities that could bring the same sort of pain. Yet the conversation was my wife's to have. She wouldn't allow the boys to play football. No way in h...

You gotta' love the Manning brothers. You know them, right? Peyton, won a Super Bowl with the Colts. Eli, won two Super Bowls with the Giants. And Connor, who hasn't won anything known to football fans. Yet there was a ESPN piece on the three of them as Peyton and Eli lined up to play this past weekend. The special was well done as they spoke with all three of the Mannings along with Mom and Dad. I couldn't help but smile. "They were always battling," Archie said. "It used to scare me that they fought so much." I thought of growing up with my brothers and sisters. We had some epic battles. John usually won. He was the oldest boy, and he wanted to win. And he was strong. What made it worse was that he was fast too. He'd chase me down and then beat me up. Except one time. I thought about that as I watched Peyton and Connor rolling around on the grass as one of the parents shot the video of their fighting. John had been wor...

There's no shock anymore when the report comes across the news. "There's been a mass shooting..." Now we just wait. I switched on CNN on Sirius Radio to hear the updates. One of the talking heads spoke of hope and prayers for the victims. Then she reported about a white male in his 60's who was breathing on site but was dead on arrival at the hospital. Dead on Arrival. There is no known motive. And do you know what upsets me more than anything else? That I didn't feel much at all. No shock. Horror for those involved, of course, but no real sense of wonder. Because it is going to continue to happen. Again and again and again. We can't stop it. We aren't interested in stopping it, apparently. And I'm sure that no matter who is interviewed, or who is in charge there will be shock conveyed and a lot of hand-wringing, but the problem isn't the guns, right? Forks don't make you fat. It's the mental illness, of ...

So the Buffalo Bills have their first win of the year. Many more to come. As Sam might have you believe. Before yesterday's game he went over the schedule again. "I don't see anyone on the schedule who can beat them," he announced. And that's being a fan for you. I was able to watch the entire first half of the game alone. Usually I'm napping at that time of the day, but I was sitting with my Mom as she recovers from hip surgery, and she took the nap as her dogs surrounded me in the chair as I watched the game. (She's one tough lady, by the way. Tougher than any of those overpaid stars). First off...anyone tells me baseball is boring should be forced to watch that half of football over and over. Secondly...it seems that football is always settled on a disputed call. The refs are in a circle and the great anticipation of the game comes in the form of what the interpretation of the rules is on any given Sunday. I swear to God. I've ...

Go figure but I follow a lot of people on Twitter who are super Springsteen fans. It's funny, but many of them have seen more than 100 shows. Some of them have made contact with Bruce in a lot of different countries and they set up their vacation schedules to visit the same places the band is visiting. This past week Bruce was playing shows in Chile. One of his biggest fans posted: "Come back to the USA. I miss you." Well, that woman got lambasted by the people overseas who have been waiting over 20 years for Bruce to visit that part of the world. It was a pretty funny exchange. Yet I posted this photo because it's a great picture. The words of a great song are there on the left. When I saw the photo I thought of the first time I saw Bruce sing it live here in Buffalo. As he shouted out: "Faith will be rewarded" He held his right hand high. We had just watched Jake pull through for our miracle. I turned to Kathy. Her right hand w...

So...finished up the annual two-day golf event with some good friends. I missed the event last year because of my torn "labia" as one of my good friends calls it, and I was going this year...no matter what. I sort of figured it would be an iffy proposition at best, but I made it through okay. Just okay. Golf is a rough game. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There are different shots on each hole. Different challenges mentally and physically. I can play with the torn labia, but it makes it difficult to sit down afterwards, and of course, some of my massive power is zapped. Yet the real difficulty in that game for me still happens around the green. I'm often up there in two or three with an excellent chance to do well...and after performing like "a mentally ill monkey" (as another good friend once pointed out) I'm yelling out curse words. The weather was sort of weak during this outing - 49 degrees as we started on Saturday - and that...

So what do you think of the happy couple? This is their engagement photo. The wedding was heavily attended. The bride wore white. They played a song about eternal bliss. The groom danced with his Mom. The bride's Dad gave her away. 8 Days later it was all over. The bride and groom got into a horrific fight. The fight ended when the bride shoved the groom in the center of his back. Off a cliff. To his death. She ran and told the police that he was missing after going out with his friends. He left and never came back. She was so worried. Please get him back. But he won't be returning. The marriage is over. His life has ended. She had worried that he loved her more than she loved him. She didn't mean to do it. What a sad story, huh? Don't they look happy there? When I read the story without the photo I pictured a much more sinister-looking woman. When she gets out of prison and someone asks her about her first marriage how w...

I hate everything about visiting a loved one in the hospital. From trying to park the car...to the 80-year-old woman at the information desk...to the scent of the place...to the hurried nurses...to the small chairs...to the cramped rooms...to the buzzing...and the beeps...to Ellen on the televisions in each and every room...and most of all... To seeing someone you love laying in that bed. I visited the hospital today and all of the trips to all of the hospitals, through the years, came rushing back. And while this trip to the hospital isn't in a life-threatening situation... ...it is still disconcerting. While I was roaming the halls trying to find the room, I read all the notices posted on the walls. There is a great effort to control the germs. To stop the infection. To make every single person comfortable. I sat at the bedside with one thought just plain screaming in my head. Get out! Of course, I was sitting in the chair watching my beautiful wife run ar...

Check out this photo. This is actually a decal on the back of a pickup truck. It's supposed to be funny. I suppose. It's a bound and gagged woman in the bed of the truck. The driver has had all sorts of problems as he has been getting pulled over regularly because private citizens are calling to report the abduction. What state do you think the guy resides in? (Besides the state of confusion). Yeah. Texas. And at first glance, I thought it was sort of amusing. That first glance didn't last long. Ten seconds after my initial snicker, I thought of how it plays for women everywhere. I'm a big fan of women. I have always been surrounded by strong, smart women who have had a true influence on my life. It's really not funny to bind and gag them and shuffle them around town. Yet in the back of my mind I kept thinking: It's just a joke! There are a lot of people who think we are all way too serious these days and that political correctness...

My Sunday morning grocery trips are sort of ruined when the Bills have a home game that is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. You see, the best time to grocery shop is around 7:30 or 8 a.m. on Sunday mornings. The aisles are less crowded. There's less of a chance to do the aisle dance with some dopey bastard who puts his cart on one side of the aisle and then searches for cream of moron soup while he stands on the other side. "Can you get the f&*$k out of the way?" I politely inquire. Yeah....Sunday mornings...it's the time to get crap done. But not on Bills home game Sunday. The parking lot was filled with young men and women in jerseys of so-called stars. A lot of the jerseys were outdated. I saw a Flutie jersey, a Lynch jersey, a Fitzpatrick, and even a Henry. (That guy has about a dozen kids with 14 different women and he's in prison, long-term, I think. Would you wear a shirt with his name on it?) Still, it's all in good fun. I had great t...

I went to a birthday party for a guy who turned 50. I met him when he was 5. We spent a lot of time at the party doing the 'Remember When' game. As kids he used to come by our house to play. There were days when he was only there about 20 minutes. We'd start playing, we'd start acting like crazy kids, and he'd be back in the car on the way home. He talked about getting a chicken leg taken right from his mouth by our boxer dog, Ricky II, I believe. We laughed at the time he was included in the swats on the ass administered by my grandmother. There were a whole lot of laughs. And there was a moment there where he was talking and his voice sounded just the same as it did back when we were 8 or 9. Same inflections, same countenance, same laugh. Life is strange. "Can you believe it? Freaking 50?" "I feel it," he said. "I played ball with the kids last week. Tough moving around." "Remember when we'd play footbal...

All right, folks. We are going to have to discuss the Breaking Bad thing as we move along...I'm still very early in...but it needs to come out. I can't take it that stuff without immediately Breaking it down. 'Cause it's Bad. In any great production the most important thing is to develop the characters fully. I've always known that in the writing game and while the acting in Breaking Bad is exceptional, we all know that the writers are the really talented people, right? Remember when everyone was reading that putrid Dan Brown book? (It was the lack of character development that made me want to vomit!) I get the characters in this one. Walter White teaches school. He should've done so much more. And while he has a lot to be thankful for it's not enough. Who can't relate to that? We all want more, more, more, right? So he goes the wrong way. A whole bunch of people do. We kinda' all have it in us, right? (Damn...I hope no...

The horrors of what happened in Syria aren't lost on me. It's amazing what men do to other men in the name of God knows what. Gassing 1400 people including 400 children is a heinous act of epic proportions. And America is built on the premise that we can't turn a blind eye to such atrocities... ...but. Can we possibly go to war again? And it's not an Obama thing. It's a simple question. What can be done? Of course, it'd be nice to have people answer the question at face value instead of branching off based on whether or not you hate the man in the oval office because right now he's already in a can't win situation. If we strike, he's wrong. If we don't, he's wrong. The same people will make the argument either way. That's the way of the political world and I find it interesting because if America does strike the people who usually call for such offensive situations are going to have to make us believe that they w...

Weird. I was stuck in traffic beside a graveyard the other day. My eyes drifted across the road to a photo on the tombstone. A black woman was staring back at me, and the photo was really clear. The overweight woman was smiling brightly. A truly wonderful photo of the lady and it was shining brightly in the circular holder. Estella 'Miss Shorty' Shepherd - 11/12/36 to 11/05/11. The wait for traffic to clear was eternal. A construction vehicle was attempting to back out of a site onto the road ahead. I spent a few moments with Miss Shorty. It seemed as if I were destined to be stuck there for a moment on a busy day. And it was obvious to me that she was well-loved. A big stone. That wonderful smile in that clear photo. Even her nickname on the stone. Below the dates that she lived were the engraved words: 'The Lord is my Shepherd.' I glanced back to her surname. Yeah, that was a fitting verse, I imagine for Miss Shorty Shepherd. She almost m...

Why does the hair on my eyebrows grow like a weed while the hair couldn't leave my head fast enough? I swear to God you know it's a problem when the hair from your eyebrows is getting into your eyes. It looks like the freaking Nike swoosh. Eyebrow hair is weird. I was watching a movie the other day and the murderer was making the poor slob dig his own grave. It got me thinking. How long would he wait there as I did the digging? After about three hours when I had just barely scraped the dirt away I'm imagining the guy would beat me with the shovel. He ain't waiting 30 hours, you know what I'm saying? And right there is another pet peeve. "You know what I'm saying?" My boys found a show on Netflix - "Trailer Park Boys." I guess it's an older show, but let me tell you, we've laughed. The language in it is horrific, but what's funnier than stringing a good set of curse words together? There's a character in there...

There seems to be a real letdown after labor day, doesn't there? The kids are heading back to school and it almost feels like we are going to head into the long, cold months. We ain't done yet, here. I actually have one last golf outing planned. I'm gonna' play with a whole bunch of friends in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the hip holds out. Yet this past weekend was fun for one simple reason. We got together and made Italian Sausage. The lineup has changed over the years, but the recipe is intact and there are still plenty of us willing to put in the effort to get it done. My brother Jim did much of the leg work again, but when I arrived on Saturday morning the cutting and grinding hadn't even begun. We got started at 9 a.m. I labeled the last package at just about 1:30 pm. 130 pounds of the best sausage that can possibly be made. Yet the thing about the ritual of getting the job done is that there are so many others in the room with the one...

Back when I was writing Nobody's Home I had these words written on a piece of yellow paper that I hung on the computer monitor. The woman in the song was trying hard to break away from a life of abuse. I'm not sure where the words came from. I found the piece of paper the other day. The next day I heard the song on the radio. A really well-written song. This is for all the women trapped right there. After the book came out the sister of the woman I was writing about (the woman didn't survive the abusive relationship), called me and wondered how I knew what her sister was going through. (Nobody's Home was based on a true story). I told her it was a crazy wind. Crazy Wind by Larry McMurtry gone off in the pitch-black dark to work the morning tour he's halfway to the highway and he won't be back for hours his tail lights down the gravel road you watch them round the bend nothing's on the TV but something's in the wind and it makes you cr...

So my NFL picks are legendary around our house because if I miss even one of them our resident trash-talker reminds me that I'm a complete moron. And since I believe the NFL is scripted anyway...I've had to look into the story ideas for this upcoming season. None of the end of the year scenarios have anything to do with the Buffalo Bills. Evidently no one circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills. Who've missed the playoffs like 72 seasons in a row. Heading for 73. The AFC East winners: Who else? New England . Just teach the dopes where to stand. New England does it better than everyone else...double or triple murders aside...but hey, who doesn't have a few of those? It's the National Felony League! The AFC North winners. Cincy is the smart pick, but I'm thinking they'll choke it up. I'll take the stupid Steelers and their rapist QB to rebound. The AFC South belongs to Houston . I keep waiting for them to turn up in a Super Bowl. Gun ...

Who would've thunk that having a cup of coffee would turn into a national obsession? I'm not one of those guys who hates coffee. I'll drink a cup, maybe two a day. I usually don't even taste the first one...just drink it down quickly as I'm heading out the door. I may stop for another at mid-morning, but let me tell you, I'm not obsessed. Damn. We have Tim Horton's up here. On every single corner. The line to the drive-thru usually snakes around and out the driveway until it interferes with traffic on the road. I'm not waiting in line for coffee. So I usually get out of the car and pour that second cup myself at a 7/11. That isn't easy either. There are 72 kinds of coffee. It takes me five minutes trying to find the regular. Blueberry coffee? Coffee with whipped cream? Why don't you just order pancakes? It always takes me another five minutes to find the friggin' lids. I like mine regular. No sugar, but milk. Jus...