Thoughts of a Common Man

Isn't that lovely? My free travel bag is on the way if I freaking sign up for AARP. And let me tell you, I'm sorta' ready. This is the deal. On Monday and Tuesday I felt great. I pushed the foot pain clear of my mind and ever since the doctor told me that it would be sticking around, I just sort of gave up trying to battle it. Life is like that. You get used to crap and sooner or later it becomes part of the routine. But I awoke on Wednesday ready to go and when I put my foot on the floor I felt a real stabbing pain in my right ankle - which is supposed to be the better of the two. I didn't think much of it. Dogs out, get the papers, eat cereal, chug coffee and out by 6:30. To the real big job downtown, make fun of a couple of people, walk around the ground floor and then through the 12 stories. By the time I got to the ground I couldn't walk without bringing a whole lot of attention to myself. "You gotta' go home, old man," the 20...

Yeah. There's a real movement afoot to declare myself as the D.B. of the week. Okay. Here it is: "Well I've built my own little dungeheap and here I sit flinging the shit about," - Charles Bukowski (speaking of Cliff Fazzolari) The Buffalo Bills play each week. I spend a lot of the week leading up to the game trying to agitate anyone who'll listen to me. You see, the Bills have gone 14 years without making the playoffs and not only did I get fed up with the hope, I started to speak loudly against it. They always draft the wrong guy. They cost us too much in taxes. They're a bunch of criminals. You've heard the rants. Well, this week, I went a bit too far as far as my kids were concerned. "Geno Smith is better than Kyle Orton," I proclaimed. Truth be told, I didn't believe it. In fact, gun to my head and I must admit that I thought the Bills would win to go to 5 and 3 on the year. More honesty? They have a chan...

Most of the world probably doesn't know who Oscar Taveras is. Baseball fans do. Tavares was the next big star coming down the pike. He was the St. Louis Cardinals best prospect since Albert Pujols. At 22 years old, he was going to dominate for about the next 15 years. He died on Sunday in a car crash in the Dominican Republic. His girlfriend also died in the crash. My son Sam was seated beside me as we read the news on Twitter just as Game 6 of the World Series was set to start. "Oh man," Sam said. "That's awful." And I instantly thought back to the days of my youth when the Yankee Captain Thurman Munson was killed in an airplane crash. Thurman had been on two championship teams and was one of my favorite players. I remember crying when my Mom told me. I also remember that she drove from our house to my little league baseball practice to break the news. How was it even possible? Sam seemed to be wondering the same sort of thing as we read a...

A little concerned with Ebola yet? Man, the news is jumping all over this, huh? It appears that Obama is responsible for spreading it. Evidently he's from Africa and that's where it started so it stands to reason that it was all part of the plan to bring down America. Some people believe that. And yet... ...should we be handling it a little differently? The New York doctor went out on the town when he got home. He even went bowling. I'm not big on bowling. I stunk at it. It made me drunk. Anywhoha... The good doc went out to eat, bowling, walking around the city, and then he came down with the symptoms. I mentioned that I was surprised that he hadn't opened a kissing booth at the end of his driveway. And yet... It's a bit complicated I think. Why are these healthcare professionals going over there to play in it anyway? Someone mentioned on one of the sites. "Because they want to help," I said. "We need to keep it out...

I was late coming home on Friday and my wife was as well. We did the dinner call about an hour after we should've been eating dinner. Don't you wish you had the time back from the usual dinner banter. The 'what do you want to do?' stuff. The hardest part of making dinner is deciding what everyone wants to eat. My parents did it differently. We ate what was on the menu. It was usually great. "Did you take anything out?" I asked. Since I was coming from out of town the prep work had to be done by someone else. "Nope." "What did the kids eat?" "Chicken fries, probably," my beautiful wife said. "You want a sub?" "I suppose." So, I woke up Saturday morning with better eating on my mind. We'd been serving up too many fast meals during the course of the week although they had a roast when I was out on the road. So, the fun started. In an hours time on Saturday morning I marinaded steaks, pe...

Saw this photo on Twitter with the caption: He brings a photo of his wife to put across from him as he eats. And if you don't think that's pretty cool, you're kinda' heartless. You might wanna' get that checked. As I'm prone to do I started to really think about that poor man. I considered that he'd probably shared an awful lot of time with his wife, and that he doesn't quite know how to go forward now. That's the life is hard part. It seems like there should be more of a pay off when you kinda reach the end. Yet. There he is: Sitting across from his favorite photo. And it's funny, but one of my buddies said: "Turning 50 mess with you? Thinking about the less time in front of the horse than what's in back of the cart?" And I'm really not. I still feel great, but my son had this to say on the day after my birthday: "Does it bother you that 80% of your life is probably gone?" (Why oh why did my kid...

Did you see the story about the Breaking Bad action figures being ripped from the shelves at Toys R Us because a woman in Florida got a petition going? (She garnered about ten thousand signatures). The woman believes that we cannot condone the violence and drug dealing ways of Jessie and Walt. She found the action figures to be dangerous to her children, evidently. It was a television show! What about Scooby-Doo? Is your kid confused by a talking dog? The best part of it came from my now favorite living actor, Bryan Cranston (with a head nod to Gandolfini, of course). Cranston said: "I burned my action figures of Florida moms." Perfect. How about the woman who was busted for DWI after trying to back into a tight parking spot at the county jail? The woman was serving as a designated driver for her drunken boyfriend and she angled the car into a spot at what she thought was the parking lot for the bar. It wasn't. It was the parking lot where the c...

This is a story of a man, making about $450,000 a year for running with a ball...and underwear. Joseph Randle is a running back with the Dallas Cowboys. He was arrested a couple of weeks ago for stealing underwear and a tester bottle of cologne. The entire tab would've run him $123.00. Evidently that was too expensive, so he allegedly stole it. Now normally that would be enough to grab D.B. of the week honors, but his actions pale in comparison to the people who actually run MeUndies. They decided to hire Randle as a spokesman! Yep. They paid the fine that was levied on him by the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys hit him with a $29,500 fine. MeUndies is going to pay that. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah! He loves our underwear so much that he stole it! But he's good guy so we're going to hire him and take away his fine and the shame that comes with doing something as low as shoplifting something that he didn't even need or want. Isn't t...

There really are times when it seems that life sort of conspires to slap the living shit out of you, right? Here's what I learned this week: 1). My dog has a disease I never even heard of until a week ago. 2). The vet charges $48 for a bag of saline. 3). When the phone rings once it will ring twelve times in a row, often times beeping in over and over until you want to throw it out the freaking window. 4). Ebola is running rampant - how many one's of people have it now in the U.S.? 5). Relaxing is tiring and the results of relaxing only last about seven minutes into the new work week. 6). 50 feels as shitty as 49. 7). It's getting cold outside. 8). When you fill your car with gas and set off on a long trip you'll just get on the Interstate when the low tire pressure light will come on. 9). When you leave the kids home alone they won't give you a straight answer about what they're doing: "We're smoking crack and inviting babes over,...

So, do you have Ebola yet? From what I hear it's a foregone conclusion that we're all going to get it, so why not just crumple up now? There are people out there who truly are trying to spread the fear and if you don't think so just flip on the news. You'd think that right now it's a disease that is affecting millions here. And I'm not downplaying it at all. It sounds absolutely horrible. But it isn't out of control in the United States, isn't it? You'd honestly think it was. I saw a note over the weekend that said 'more people have married Kim Kardashian than have contracted Ebola in the United States.' If that truly is the case than we aren't in panic mode yet, right? (I'd be more afraid of Kim at this point). But why I'm so afraid of the disease, is because it is going to truly incite fear into those who are vulnerable to those sorts of things. There are people all over this great land who fear: 1). Our ...

My beautiful wife's birthday idea was to get me away for a little while so I wouldn't feel compelled to do something that involved work, and I really believed that it was a good plan that would benefit both of us. We headed to Peek & Peak a resort that offers golf and skiing - it's just about at the Pa. border, so far enough away. The weather wasn't good for either golf (which I love) or to ski (which I hate). So we relaxed. Hot tub, pool, massage at the spa, a couple of movies, and good food. I actually slept past 8 o'clock on Saturday morning which I don't think I've done in 15 years. By the time the movie ended in the mid-afternoon between the massage and dinner, I was fighting to keep my eyes open. "Damn, this being lazy takes up a lot of time," I said. Yet there were moments when I wanted to do something more. It truly is hard to get a Fuzzy to settle down for a long spell, but I kept lecturing myself. "Don't cle...

It's been a pretty good few months for those of us who like music that doesn't have a beat, or horrific language, or the rap voices. First there was the free U2 record. Then the Mellencamp record. Then Melissa Etheridge and now new records by Bob Seger and Neil Young and even freaking Pink Floyd. It feels like 1988. I heard about the Seger record and then listened to an interview by the Detroit rocker. I considered purchasing the record with a few clocks of the thumb through I-tunes. (I still don't like buying records like that, by the way). And then I thought: Maybe I'll wait until I hear a couple of tracks. But I couldn't. I ordered the record quickly and it downloaded instantly. Within 5 minutes of having the thought I was listening to that old familiar voice. The songs played one after another. I liked that one, I thought. And I repeated that thought 13 straight times. I like it. I like it. I like it. All good songs with good l...

It's gonna' take a long while to get used to it. But I'm 50. And I suppose that the thing to do today is to think about all of the love in my life. Great friends. A tremendous family life - both growing up through the first 30 years - and after the shit hit the fan and my beautiful wife came charging into my life. My Mom and Dad. My brothers and sisters. My beautiful wife and adoring children. My dogs! Just surrounded by love every single step of the way. So, what does 50 tell you? It tells you that it's a pretty good formula. So here is me at 50! I look pretty good, right?

There was a point during one of the Royals-Orioles games when it hit me that football is a waaaaaayyyyyy more popular sport than baseball. And I will never be able to figure that out. There's a flag on the play!!! But I get it, I guess (people like to gamble) But this isn't about football...it's about baseball! I got over my no Yankees in the playoffs angst quickly because I wanted to watch the games, and because I don't really cry when they lose anymore. (Okay, I cry a little). But I thought: A's over Royals in the Wild Card Game and Pirates over Giants. Neither of those things happened, but surely Detroit would beat Baltimore, the Angels would sweep the Royals, the Giants would lose to the Nationals and the Dodgers (with their ridiculous payroll) would beat up the Cards. None of those things happened. I got every single series wrong! But Baltimore would finally beat the Royals and the Cards would certainly beat the Giants!! Uh...nope...t...

Paris is a ball of energy around our house. Normally. Despite the fact that she is now 5 years old Paris moves around non-stop. I often have to chase her away from me because she's relentless. But on Friday we noticed that she was actually sleeping. Then we noticed that she wasn't eating or drinking anything at all. Soon enough we were trying to coax her outside. Then she didn't want to even go for her car ride. So...off to the vets we went. Sam is a big-hearted kid and he was infinitely worried. He sat in the room with me as the vet started asking questions. It didn't take long on the initial visit. We were sent home with some antacid pills, basically, and supposedly Paris received a shot in the back room that would have her up and moving in no time. $284! But whatever, right? You have to keep the living things alive. It didn't work. Paris was worse off on Tuesday morning. Now mind you, she hasn't eaten a single thing or taken more than ...

First off: Happy Birthday to my buddy, Jeff Renaldo - love you, pal! Secondly, My family certainly knows me well. The one thing that is unchanged around these parts is that I'm not big on change. Of course, I do use my phone for work and it truly is a huge asset for a lot of other things I enjoy doing like reading news and O also enjoy Twitter and busting on my friends on Facebook. So it's in my hand a lot of the time. Yet I had a bit of a problem because if I were to take the upgrade through my provider I was going to lose my data plan. I was resigned to the fact that I'd stay with a 4S for the rest of my life. Which was okay, I guess, but my beautiful wife and adoring children had a plan to surprise me with the I-Phone 6 for my birthday. They were so excited (and so fearful that I needed a week to get used to the idea of change) that they gave it to me a week early. I didn't jump for joy when I opened the box and while I certainly appreciated it, and c...

On Sunday morning it occurred to me that the lead story in the Buffalo News , for the past ten days, had been the Buffalo Bills or Terry Pegula, or Kim Pegula, or thoughts of the new stadium. Ten straight days! In a world where Ebola is torturing people. In a country that is in how many wars? In a city where we are third-poorest in the nation. On the streets where there are murders each and every day. We are celebrating a couple of billionaires who bought a team that makes millionaires of men who may or may not be suffering permanent head injuries from smashing their noggin into other over-sized chemically enhanced men. It's crazy to me. And on Sunday morning I took the dogs for their ride around the neighborhood and watched as a group of 20-something men and women gathered their food and beer, all decked out in their Bills garb, preparing to head for the stadium that sits less than 2 miles from where I'm writing this blog. They were all laughing and chatting ...

I've had a lot of people asking me if turning 50 is difficult on my already fragile, feeble mind. "I'd rather do it than not," I told my beautiful wife when she inquired. Yet there certainly are moments when you do the whole 'taking stock' thing. Life is never perfect, right, but there are moments when you want to say: I'm doing okay in THAT at least. I have resigned myself into knowing that I will never not think about things and try to work out the kinks. I truly envy the people who seem to be skating through life without a care in the world. I suspect that they are also lying. Still... ...the taking stock thing reared its head as I trudged through an active demolition job. We've already talked about my fascination with finding old newspapers and old discarded parts of life. Well on Friday I sort of hit a gold mine. I'm not sure what type of business it was but I stumbled on old discarded human resources files and a bunch of Mi...

I remember when I first heard about Melissa Etheridge. My buddy Tom who lived up the road had the record and he invited us over to listen to it. Tom is the biggest Who fan I know (sorry, Terry) and we would often argue about Who versus the Stones . Tom played the record with Similar Features on it, for me and my brother John, and we all agreed that Melissa rocked like a man. We all wondered if she was good looking, but as it turned out, she later came out as gay. Didn't matter at all. Good artist. Soon after we found out she was a Bruce fan as well and she famously sang the line "So Mary climb in," when singing Thunder Road with Bruce. Springsteen laughed. By chance I was listening to E-Street radio yesterday when Melissa was guest d-j and she talked about all of that stuff back then - she didn't mention Tom. But she also talked about her new song - where she went for the Bruce sound. She nailed it. It's a great song and I was instantly drawn to the line...

My father was tremendous at arguing. In fact, he would argue almost anything just to get me to take another look at things. In doing that he made me consider things I never would have considered, and he also allowed me to become a royal pain in the ass to my own children. Clayton Kershaw is a pitcher for the L.A. Dodgers and everyone who follows baseball knows that he's the best. I guess I got sick of hearing my kids sing his praises. I have nothing against Kershaw, mind you, I just hate when anyone who isn't wearing an interlocking NY on his chest gets too much attention. "He needs to do it in the playoffs," I said to Jake and Sam. "You can't call him the best until he does it when the pressure is on. During Kershaw's first playoff start this year he was pitching a gem when the bottom fell out. He gave up 8 runs in the game and I quickly reminded the boys. 3 days later he got beat again. Sam really didn't want to hear it, but in an ...

So, I was shooting the breeze with a doctor friend of mine and we started talking about a hundred years from now and how exciting life will most likely be by then. There will most certainly be unbelievable advancements in technology and who knows? Maybe we will have figured out how to live by then. I think of my grandfather's life that spanned the invention of the automobile, the air travel being perfected and on down to all of the advancements in entertainment including television. What an amazing time to be alive. But it always fascinates me to look back as well and the gas masks on the kids during the world wars is mind-boggling, isn't it? My parents remember all of the sirens going off when they were children and there had to be a lot of panic involved, right? I remember the fallout shelter stuff as the nuclear devastation was thoroughly discussed when I was a kid. There are still fallout shelters around and I can't fathom having to live out very long in a va...

Okay, so the Ebola scare is a hot button issue. Everyone has an opinion especially since there are people leaving Africa and entering the United States while carrying the disease. There is a real opportunity to spread fear in the situation. There are plenty of people out there willing to spread the fear as well. Perhaps travel to the country should be slowed until we have a handle on it...but... ...Up steps Rush Limbaugh to grab the D.B. of the week honors as he addressed the issue. Do you know why travelers are allowed into the United States while carrying the disease? Well, according to Rush it's because Obama is working hard to pay back the people of the United States for ... ...get this! Slavery! Yep, that's the crap that Rush was pedaling this week. Obama so hates the country that he is allowing planes to come over filled with Ebola patients so that he can finally even the score regarding slavery! I had to listen to that one a couple of times before ...

I'm in my last ten days in the decade of the 40's. It's weird to me. We watch a lot of the Dateline, 48 Hours types of shows and early this week there was an episode concerning a murder that happened on October 18, 1974. I remembered the day well. It was my 10th birthday. It was the worst birthday of my life. Up to that time and since. You see, I was on the Little Loop football team that year. Before the season started, I had visions of being a great running back like Orenthal James Simpson of the Buffalo Bills. What I turned out being was a guy who rode the bus to sit on a bench outside in the cold, drizzling rain. The highlights of all the games were the orange slices they served at halftime. I'd eat 20 of those as the coaches talked about what we had to do to make up the 3-touchdowns we were behind. I recall the morning of my 10th birthday. Me: I'm not going to our game today. It's my birthday. Mom: Yes you are. You signed up. You aren...

It was a rainy, cold miserable weekend in Buffalo. "It's gonna' get worse," was what I said to my beautiful wife as we headed to the movie theater to see Gone Girl . I wasn't thrilled with the movie choice as I'm not a Ben Affleck fan, but that's more about him being a Suck Sux fan and bashing the 27-Time World Champion Greatest Franchise in the History of Organized American Sports. But Gone Girl it was. I dropped Kathy and Sam at the door and they headed in for tickets. I parked the car a long ways away and made the long walk alone. I broke through the door and went to the food line. Sam can't watch a movie without a huge blue slushie and some candy. I needed the "small" water for $6. We got a small bag of popcorn too. $22 in damage for that crap and the guy in line was so slow that I wanted to pull him over the counter. But we were inside. And you could tell how miserable it was outside by how filled the theater was. By the s...

In my job there are plenty of chances to confront people who are doing things that don't make much sense to me. As an inspector who has a little power to discipline I'm always surprised when I see something way out of whack. A few years ago I walked up on a mason who was setting brick about 35 feet in the air. He was on a scaffold that was not protected. One wrong step and he'd hit the ground. He was a big man - at least 250 pounds. He was working hard. "What are you doing for fall protection?" I asked from the ground below. "Bumbles bounce," he said. I laughed. Then there was a 19-year-old who stuck his right hand between two guards on a press unit. He had been trying to do the job quickly, un-jamming a stuck piece without de-energizing the equipment. He lost three fingers on his strong hand. I had a chance to interview him months later. "How much extra money did you make?" I ask. "60 bucks," he said. Twenty bucks a f...

Every once in awhile there's a Breaking Bad marathon on these days. I still watch. And of all the things in recent memory I am captured by the series and the acting and the suspense. It's been over a year since I viewed the final episode and there's still a part of me that wishes: There was more. Vince Gilligan, the show's creator is putting out a new show in February featuring Saul Goodman, but can he repeat it all? I'm not sure, but I'll be watching. I also have a couple of sons who run around here telling me that Breaking Bad wasn't as good as Dexter , but try as I might, I can't get on the side of a guy who's butchering people. Maybe someday we will give it a chance. But I'm featuring works that strike me, and there were a lot of reasons why Breaking Bad has stuck in my brain. First off, Walter White. A man who worked hard and did things the right way and then was hit with the grim reality of it all ending one day, befo...

The poor woman who works at the convenience store suffers from arthritis in her knees. I have it in my feet. We have a real tendency to commiserate. "How are you this morning?" I asked on Friday. "Oh my aching ass," she said. "I can hardly walk." We laughed. I showed her the air casts that I've taken to wear on both feet. I told her about how hopeful I had been about mid-week. "But it didn't work out," I said. Yet we aren't the only ones; that's for sure. "I have it in my hands," the next guy in line said. "There are days when I can't even pick up a pen." He was filling out lottery tickets. A million dollar prize wouldn't take the pain away. "Doc says it doesn't go away either," I said. "Nope," he answered. "Just take the pills and try and survive the side effects." I paid for my paper and headed for the door. The clerk and the lottery dude wen...

So we have heard quite a bit about Ebola lately, huh? I always think to the start of the great Stephen King book, The Stand . ] The disease in the stand was airborne, of course, and slowly but surely the entire population was brought into the battle. (That's one of the greatest books released in the last 20 years - loved it!). Yet we now have a case of a man suffering from Ebola in a Dallas hospital. There were reports that he may have been in other areas as well so...there you go. Has it started? We went through it with the bird flu scare. There were other health scares as well. Do you think this is the way it will all end? The maniacs who are afraid of everything are certain that we will all be struck with Ebola very shortly. (And let me tell you, there are plenty of really scared people out there! My God!! There are people hunkered down all over this great land). There is also a segment of the population who isn't scared at all. "More people die of...

Since the NFL has suffered this year and as some of its members have received the D.B. of the Week Award, you kinda' could've guessed that ESPN wouldn't be far behind. ESPN and the NFL are partners in the crime of just controlling the minds of the pigskin-loving-freaks that cover this great land. Watch the coverage of the league on ESPN. It's absurd. There's a show on every half hour and the announcers and talking heads are stuck saying the same thing...over and over and over again. "Step it up to the next level in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE ." "The ball moves fast in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE ." "The coaches work 23 and a half hours a day every week, even in the off-season in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE ." "It's impossible to know if the commissioner saw the tape of one of the athletes in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE knocking out the women in the elevator, but the good people of the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEA...

A long while ago one of my college buddies came to Buffalo for a visit. He wasn't impressed. "This place is a shit hole," he said as we headed over the Skyway and into the city. I wasn't even able to impress him with Niagara Falls either because we ended up in Canada at the ballet instead. But today I was strolling around the downtown because there is construction on every corner: And I must say the place is starting to really shape up. (Of course I'm the one to thank because I've kept all these construction guys safe as they build the joint). Yet it makes me wonder. What the hell have we been doing for the past 20 years? And of course there are still a lot of really beaten down areas. The abandoned homes on the East side and the West side and the North side and the South side need to be handled, but we are even fancying up the old grain silos: It's for beer, of course, but that's the sort of town we are. Yet there is great an...