Thoughts of a Common Man

I had a dream the other night that I met Kaley Cucco (Penny from The Big Bang) and that I not only met her, but that she wanted to make out with me. Which we did. But Kathy caught us. And wasn't mad. "Hey, if there's someone out there dumb enough to make out with you, go for it," she said. Anywhoha... Back in the real world. I'm not enamored with the Yankees trading for Aroldis Chapman the fireballing, alleged domestic-abuser from the Reds. He's a great talent and will help them, but I'm not a hypocrite. He's not been charged but they said he may have choked his girlfriend and immediately following their disagreement, he shot 8 holes in his garage. He's also had a couple of other run-ins. There's an arrogance about Yankees fans, of course... . ..We can fix him! But the truth of the matter is I bust on the abusers and idiots on the Bills... ...so...gotta' stand with my convictions... ...not a fan of the move. Wi...

The movie has made a billion dollars already. The highest grossing film in the first week. The highest grossing film in it's second week. The biggest Christmas Day score ever. Ehhh... ...I've seen just one of the Star Wars films. Don't ask me which one. Jake made me go back about ten years ago. I don't remember a minute of it. And I don't mean to be dismissive. People seem to really like it. I've just never really been interested. Does that make me un-American? Which one is the first? Should I watch the sequels or the prequels first? I just don't know! And through the years people have talked about it to me. I've actually pretended to know what they were talking about. George Lucas. R2D2. Jabba. Who else? Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, right? Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader? See...I know enough to pretend...but I'm not sure I'll be heading to the theater. The boys have been interested. Howard Stern...

There was no way the topic was going to be ignored. The subject of The Donald came up about halfway through the Christmas Party. "He's gonna' make America great again," one of my nephews said. I didn't want any part of it. My goal for the upcoming year is to not get into any lengthy debates on social media... ...God help me if I have to argue with someone in public. "Get away from me," I said. But the truth of the matter is that I was born to argue...and a little while later... The Donald ... ...came up again. "When he's the president he's gonna' throw everyone out who doesn't belong!" I tried to explain the dynamics of a big city. "In New York, you ride in a subway car with people from about 11 different countries," I said. "People don't fight. All of the different cultures mix." "Not after Trump gets in! All white!!" My brother-in-law is a funny guy. He can stir up...

Pretty funny how a Christmas celebration goes when you're trying to feed about 40 people. My beautiful wife said that we'd eat at 5:00 so I worked towards that goal. Of course, at about quarter to five about 20 little kids broke into the room where I was cooking and started playing in front of the oven. You can't yell at someone else's kids and not feel like a dopey bastard...so I grabbed my wife: "Get them the hell out. Three-thousand square feet and they gotta' stand on my feet." They were gone. I had the food ready at exactly 5:00. Pasta, ham, turkey, brocoli, cheese & rice (thanks Lorie), stuffed peppers (thanks Mike), mashed potatoes (28 pounds of them!), rolls, salad. Everything hot at once. And the line shuffled along and I waited it out. Then I grabbed a plate and headed up there. "Damn, the food is good," I said as I was eating. That's the way to know how it is when you cook it yourself. Eat it. If it'...

I love finding old newspapers because I marvel about what life was like back when. Someone sent out a post about what life was like just 100 years ago and I was fascinated. The average life expectancy for men was 47 years. What will it be 100 years from now? I guess we won't know, but it's fun to speculate. The advancements being made every year...will it be possible to go to 150 or so? Will people in 2115 look back and say: They only lived to 75? Only 14% of the homes had bathtubs. They must have been some stinky bastards. Most women only washed their hair once a month...they used Boras or egg yolks for shampoo. Attractive. The population of Las Vegas was 30. I'm going to Vegas next month...every time I'm there I wonder about the waste of resources. 100 years ago there were only 30 people living there??? Coffee was 15 cents a pound. We pay five bucks a cup in some places now! The average U.S. worker made between two and four hundred do...

The Christmas Eve celebration turned when Sam decided that he wanted to shoot pool on the table where my brothers, father and a lot of friends played years and years before. I recall the celebration the night before John's wedding when the 8-ball contest turned into a pool hockey game where we fired the balls at the pockets and tried to score. The other team played defense using only their hands, which sounds brutal enough, but the fun started if a ball left the table and you could tackle to try and gain possession. That game never really caught on! Well, the teams were set. Jake and Uncle Chuck against me and Sam. Thank God they weren't filming it! I played a lot of pool in college as we had a table set in a room that was too small to accommodate. We broke the front window of that place at least ten times as we tried to shoot. (Remember George). Sam and Jake didn't actually even know how to hold the stick, but while Chuck was teaching Jake a little, I was stuck...

There's an awful lot of work for one day's events, isn't there? I helped clean around the house...including three bathrooms. (The boys had a pubic hair rug going in their stall). And while I was doing it, and as I was trying to stand up without yelping, I thought: "Merry Christmas!" And these days there are a lot of people griping about "They" and "Them" attacking their rights to say "Merry Christmas" and I continue to marvel at the beauty of it all. "Merry Christmas!" Christmas has been weird for me over the last 6 years. The party has been smaller. A bit of sadness surely creeps in. When you're thinking about love and family and togetherness it's only natural to think of those who aren't celebrating with you. But the feeling certainly hasn't changed all that much. I feel the closeness. I appreciate all that I do have. The aches and pains go away a little... ...and despite a...

We all know by now that I'm an enemy of clutter. And things that knock me out of routine. And change. Well, I have learned to relax... ...but just a little bit. I could feel the breakdown coming. A couple of weeks ago the hot tub quit. We didn't fix it right away as we tried to diagnose the problem, first...take the logical way. I got to sleep through that. Then...the computer froze while I was writing reports one afternoon. Not good. We searched for a new computer as I massaged the old one through numerous startups and unplanned shut downs. Then the presents started being wrapped. Things laying around the house. Outside of their usual places. "Hold on," I kept telling myself. "Christmas is coming." And then it happened. During the middle of an important report... ...the computer went pffft. Completely. I did what we all do in a moment of crisis around here: "KATHY!" She was speaking calmly. She might h...

Spent a lot of the day yesterday thinking of Dad. He was always ready for his birthday even though he'd always tell us to stay home... ...then he'd tell us not to get him any presents. We'd get him presents anyway. Life is a real test, you know? You spend your life close to your family and then you spend years just missing them when they go. But it doesn't have to be my Dad's birthday to think of the lessons learned. He taught all of us the things that we needed to cope. Work ethic. Sense of humor. A touch of craziness. The big heart. When we start swapping stories we always come to the same conclusion: Dad was one of a kind. On his birthday those stories just enter my mind. One by one. And life is rough. But I have a feeling that I'll laugh a little thinking of Dad again today. And tomorrow. And the next day.

The comic Steven Wright has an amazing mind. I intend to live forever...so far, so good. And when the thoughts are set out there one-by-one they seem simple enough, but the majority of us don't think that way. Eagles may soar, but Eagles don't get sucked into jet engines. And every once in awhile I'll have a thought like that...but he is prolific at putting them all down. My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, but I made your horn louder." If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. The sooner you fall behind the more time you'll have to catch up. And given a little thought all of the witty phrases make sense. The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. We've all been there...the butter is too rigid...we tear up the roll. If at first you don't succeed, sky diving is not for you. And I think of all the great comic minds. I cringe when I think that George...

Stumbled upon this from the book: That Person's Tao Te Ching by William Martin. Just a beautiful thought. Make the Ordinary Come Alive Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry When pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them The extraordinary will take care of itself. On Saturday night I felt a great amount of angst given all that was left to do to 'get ready for Christmas' and I think that we all struggle with that sort of feeling inside. And then we don't enjoy it like we had planned. I'm a task-driven man...sometimes to the detriment to all that is going on. Going to enjoy the ordinary this season... ...the extraordin...

A couple of weeks back I contacted a friend - Mike - and asked him if he'd like to have lunch. He said that he couldn't make it because he was in the hospital with his Dad - Tom - who was pretty sick. Tom was fast approaching his 92nd birthday. "Ah, man," I said. "Hang in there. If there's anything you need!" Mike and his family hung in there. Until this past Sunday when Tom, surrounded by family at the hospital, in the 4th quarter of the Bills game, breathed his last. Just two weeks short of turning 92... ... Tom passed away. And I am sad for my friend and the rest of his huge family because no matter how old one gets to be... ...saying goodbye is sad. Yet I was also sad for me! You see, I grew to know Tom a little bit over that past 15 years or so because he was often on some of the same sites that I was on... ...doing safety inspections for hardworking guys across Western New York. Tom kept on doing them until he was 90! At f...

So...finally got the prep work done for the colonoscopy... ...which was a beautiful thing. First off, Kathy went to the pharmacy to retrieve the medicine needed and she laughed as she handed it to me. "A twenty-four hour fast?" And of course, I knew that would be the difficult part of it. Twenty-four hours without food??? Of course, many people have gone through the procedure and it is nothing whatsoever to whine about... ...but this is me we're talking about! And food!! I love food!! Thankfully, I had a huge plate of Chicken and Sausage Riggies from Rico's in Syracuse the night before the fast began. A little breakfast and then the fast. All day long my so-called friends taunted me with photos of my favorite foods. The friends who were around me told me about their big lunches. A couple of others unwrapped candy and popped it into their mouths, first asking me if I'd like a piece. What do you do in such a situation? I decided to ha...

It all started when I was out of town for the Bills-Patriots match-up about a month ago. The Bills lost, but somehow the game was less painful for my boys because I wasn't there chiding them (Hi Kim) as the game went along. So... ...the next week I asked them: "Would you like me to watch the first half of the game in my room, or down here with my family?" I asked. "Watch both halves up there," Sam and Jake said, in unison. "That hurts," I said. "We need to spend quality time together." "We'll be all right." And it all goes back to our pre-season predictions. Sam had the Bills at 12-4. Matt said 11-5. Jake went with 10-6. I said 8-8. The Bills are currently at 6 wins and 7 losses and somehow... ...it's all my fault! This past Sunday the mood was extremely dour around Camp Clifford . The Bills lost a close game to a bad Philadelphia team. Immediately following the game all three kids went away...

Rondo is a professional basketball player for the Sacramento Kings. He got a beef with a ref during the course of the game. The referee, Billy Kennedy, had long been rumored to be gay. Rondo called him a "mother-$%$$ Fa##ot." He repeated it on the court just in case not everyone had heard him. Then he denied saying it. Before he admitted he said it. Even though he didn't mean it. And that's what I hate most about a situation like this: Rondo issued an apology of sorts: "My actions during the game were out of frustration and emotion, period! They absolutely do not reflect my feelings toward the LBGT community. I did not mean to offend or disrespect anyone." Okay, let's take that apart. Is he forgiven because he was emotional during a game? His words do not reflect his feelings for the LBGT community? So...he has no prejudice whatsoever? He did not mean to disrespect or offend Kennedy? Of course he did! He knew the words w...

This argument drives me crazy. Yes, Pete Rose was the hit leader and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame based on his playing career, but there's more to it than that. He is banned from being involved in baseball because he BET ON BASEBALL AND HE ACCEPTED THE LIFETIME BAN. Rose lied and then lied a little more and then lied a lot after that. I suppose that is what you do when you're caught, but through the years he has let out a little bit more of the truth each time that he has been cornered. He recently explained that he bet on every single game that he managed when working as the Reds field manager. He was betting on games that he had major influence in. He throws ten grand against the team and then he puts a stiff on the mound. That is conduct unworthy of greatness. O.J. Simpson belongs in the football Hall of Fame as well, based on his in-game performance, but I am a strong opponent of those who don't want to kick him out based on the fact that he cut...

Sam was a big fan of the television series Dexter. He kept begging me to watch the series about the serial killer who only goes after the bad guys. I had tried the series a couple of times but only got a few episodes in. "It's weird," I announced. We watched House for a long time. I loved House . The writing was great. The acting was superb and the sarcasm was sharp. But all good things... ...we finished it. "What's next?" Kathy asked. "DEXTER!!!!" Sam screamed. So...we tried it again. And this time we are going to make it all the way through. The Sopranos started off the series idea of rooting for the bad guy. There was no better character than Tony Soprano. Tony was killing people and we were all rooting for him to get away with it! (R.I.P. Gandolfini - my favorite actor of all-time). But, back to Dexter . He preys on the bad guys. He shows little emotion. He needs things neat and orderly. He guards his thi...

On Friday night the Golden State Warriors were behind the Boston Celtics with just a few minutes left. I'm not much of a basketball fan these days, but I was a little interested because of the winning streak the Warriors were on. They had won 23 in a row to open the season and 27 straight dating back to the end of last year. Could they break the record set by the West-Goodrich-Wilt Lakers of my childhood? As I watched the end of the game a couple of things re-entered my mind. Like crying when the Lakers finally lost to the Bucks to end that streak when I was a mere 7 years old. I hated Kareem Abdul Jabbar for a long time because of that game. But I got back into the present day. The Celtics had a chance to win before the end of regulation. Sam and Jake entered the room to watch Boston's last ditch attempt fail. Then we watched the overtime. Both teams looked tired. The announcers out of Boston were brutal. Overtime ended in another tie. Did I want to se...

So they passed a climate control bill that 195 countries signed up for, huh? Strange that it is being announced on the weekend when it's 65 degrees in Buffalo just a handful of days before Christmas. People who don't believe much in climate change will say that the warm temps have nothing to do with it... ...but last year when it was snowing in feet...they said: "What about global warming?" I have a tendency to listen to the science dudes because they seem a tad more informed about it than me, but the argument is tired and not even a little interesting anymore. It would stand to reason to me that the activities of humans, in the last 100 years or so, would cause disruptions of some sort...but I struggled to pass Earth Science because I wasn't much interested as a 9th grader. My interests are about the same now. Yet what will happen to the Earth in my children's time or in their children's time? I won't know! So. I'll enjoy the...

Thank God we didn't have the stupid Elf on the Shelf deal when our kids were little. My beautiful wife would've had a question for me every single day: "Where the hell is the elf?" We are on an eternal Easter Egg hunt around here on most every day between Kathy and Sam... ...they lose everything! "Have you seen my phone?" "Did you move the dog medicine?" "Where are my car keys?" So...I thought about just writing about the Elf on the Shelf and what it might be doing to the psyche of kids who are afraid that a stuffed toy is working as a spy and torturing them on a daily basis. But then I saw something else: A meme that said: "When I was a kid I didn't need an elf on the shelf to motivate me to behave during Christmas time. I had a belt on the shelf that motivated me to behave the whole year through!" Naturally I had to go to the comment section to read such gems of wisdom as this: "My parents be...

Started to get slightly annoyed when I saw the first article about the scalpers who grab up all the Springsteen tickets way before they go on sale to the general public. Got even more agitated thinking about the fact that the tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday when I am usually limping up a freaking ladder somewhere. Thought about the angst that I've battled each and every time a new tour is announced. During the Born in the USA days the calls shut down the switchboard on the East Coast. So. I took a deep breath and figured out something... ...I haven't ever missed a show that I wanted to go to... ...and I haven't sat in the upper deck in about 30 years. We will get there!!! But I was still annoyed when I contacted the First Niagara Center on Thursday afternoon. Me: Will you be selling tickets at the window on Friday morning? Douche: Yes. But you need a handbill. Me: How do I get a handbill? Douche: There aren't any left. Me: When di...

We have three D.B.'s of the week. Let's sort it out...you can make your own decision as to who deserved the award. 1). Dusty Baker: I'm a huge baseball fan. We all know that. Yet baseball is not free of idiotic people. Just because you can throw a ball 104 mph doesn't mean you don't act like an idiot sometimes. There is an allegation out there against Aroldis Chapman, the great pitcher for the Reds. It seems that Chapman is under investigation for the alleged choking of his wife, or girlfriend. He then allegedly discharged about a dozen bullets in his garage. The fight was not reported to MLB until Chapman was nearly traded to the Dodgers. When the news of the alleged beat-down hit the wire people got in line to talk about it. Dusty Baker, who has been around baseball for 40-some years chimed in by saying that "not all abusers wear pants" which means that the woman in the Chapman choking situation was somewhat to blame for the event. That's...

We caught the new Vacation movie a couple of weeks ago, and while it was nowhere near the level of the original there were a couple of laughs in it. I actually laughed out loud when Christina Applegate went back to college and tried to complete the obstacle course after chugging a pitcher of beer. There are days when I long for the college days, but I would be asleep on someone's couch by about ten-thirty...so I could appreciate it. Well, lo and behold there's a story about a real life runner. You see it? 81-year-old Elvira Montes of Austin, Texas actually finished a 12-ounce beer and then completed a 400-meter lap. She had to drink and run the lap four times. She did it all in a matter of 20:24. Not bad. Completing a beer mile at the age of 81? What is even better about the story is that Elvira beat her daughter's time in the event, by 50 seconds, and her son-in-law couldn't even finish the course. Elvira admitted that the beer-drinking was the r...

There was a moment in mid-October when it hit me that I'd actually be able to finish the book that I was working on: Everything I Know. That's because I reached a point in the writing where the characters took over and pointed me in the direction of the ending. Writing is a really weird thing. I'll show you the black notebook on this one sometime, when the box set of everything someday comes out. Little snippets of thoughts written as I drive down the street. Conversations that stick in my head...meaning nothing to the guy who is on the other end of the talk...and me. There's still work to do, of course, but last weekend I sat down with the book on the Notepad and read it through as if I were just picking the book off the shelf at Barnes & Noble. And I liked it. Reading along like that is weird, as well, because there are sentences in there that surprise. Whoa. Where did that come from? I imagine that sounds strange to someone who knows that I...

I saw a homeless man on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. I had just pulled my car to the side of the road and I was digging through an ashtray filled with coins as I watched the dirty, old man push his shopping cart from one garbage can to another. The man appeared to be about ten years older than me. I sipped my $4 coffee and watched as he struggled with discarded pizza boxes, plastic grocery bags and God knows what else. He came out of the trash can with a Pepsi can that had been squeezed a little too tightly. He spent a couple of minutes with the can between his gloved-covered hands in an effort to get the can back to some sort of cylindrical state so that he could turn it in for a nickel. We have a garage filled with garbage bags that hold cans that my kids are too lazy to take to the store. I grabbed a couple of the quarters to feed the meter and then I considered my wallet. I extracted a ten-dollar bill. The man was about fifty feet away as I slipped the quarters into t...

There's the Queen Team photo from this year. Corinne was honored once again this past year. She doesn't much talk about the honors or the awards. Just let's the work do the talking. And, of course, it's her birthday today. People all across the land will rise up and wish her a great day. I'm looking forward to a nice brunch... ...and a lot of laughs. So. To the Queen! Happy Birthday! Thank you for bringing laughter to our boys! Jeff said it best: "We both love you all!"

My phone really started blowing up on Friday late morning. I try to throw the cell phone on the floor on the passenger side so that I'm not tempted to pick it up as I drive... ...but there were a whole bunch of text messages coming through. I pulled to the side of the road, expecting that something bad was happening, either at home or on one of the jobs. But it was quite the opposite. Springsteen announced his tour plans for the first three months of 2016. Check that out. Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Albany. Damn! We could get a large limo van and travel from city to city in an endless quest to meet Bruce. I could get my big friend, a college roommate, a gypsy woman and maybe a girl we pick up at Starbucks! We could figure out what has gone wrong in our lives from what we believed would happen back in the early 80's when we started going to Bruce concerts. Hey! That sounds like the plot to an award winning book. Dogs on Main Street...

My dogs stick their heads out the window as we drive down the road to get the paper each morning. Every once in awhile there's a man walking down the street and Paris barks at him. He looks at the dogs and waves as if he were a four-year-old. It's an odd thing, actually, because the man is a huge, physically-imposing man who appears to transform into a happy little boy. I probably wouldn't have considered it troublesome until I actually met the man in the gas station/convenience store. "I like your dogs," he said. When I looked into the man's eyes it was readily apparent that the elevator didn't go all the way to the top. But still, we chatted. (He may have been wondering the same thing). When he turned and left the cashier looked to me. "Stay away from that guy, he's a complete 'whack job'." I sorta' laughed, but she wasn't kidding around. "You see all these shootings," she said. "If I h...

Another mass shooting. We're sitting ducks. Do you care about the circumstances anymore? Are you shocked when you get the update? Do you really do the 'thoughts and prayers' or just tweet it? I don't even want to hear about these shootings anymore. I made a huge mistake by tweeting the following thing: "Our society is a nightmare." A guy who roots for the gun in such situations tried to bait me into saying anything that was anti-gun. I wished him a good day. You know what he blamed it on? Regulations that make it tough for good citizens to actually get guns. Maybe he is the one who is right. I don't know. I just don't freaking know anything anymore. But this one is at a home for the disabled, right? So. Churches. Movie Theaters. High Schools. Colleges. Grammar Schools. Armed Forces Bases. Every Street Corner in America. It makes me appreciate each day, however, when the wife and kids walk through the doo...

Frankly, I'm amazed. Donald Trump is still out in the lead in the field of GOP candidates for president. You gotta' give him credit, somehow. Despite the fact that leaders in his own party want nothing to do with him, he continues to build momentum. Which is absolutely remarkable. Considering: 1). He said John McCain isn't a hero because he likes his war veterans not taken prisoner. He got away with that one by saying that he never said it. 2). He called Mexicans rapists . Now I know how he got away with this one...people who are voting for him...agree with him. It would make sense that an entire race of people can't be labeled as violent rapists...but: 3). He ranted against Muslims and the Syrian refugees saying that the Muslims were actually numbered in the thousands and cheering in New Jersey when the towers went down. There's no footage of such a demonstration. But he's got his team 'looking for footage' but he claims that ...

Received a text with a couple of photos attached on Thanksgiving morning. My buddy Jeff attached the photos of the old campsite where we spent a lot of our weekend days and nights when we were between the ages of 16 and 22 or so. That's the hoop. There was also a shot of some names carved in a tree where the girls raided the site and wrote messages to us. Damn! No girls allowed!! Jeff was taking his grandson back to the campsite to show him around! Yeah. Grandson!! And it's a strange thing about photos. Some of them are worth a million words. I immediately had about eleven memories pop into my head. That site was the first place where I drank beer. Number 11... That was a place where I heard about one of my buddies hook-up with his first girlfriend. I was shocked I tell you! We used to play hide and seek in the woods. We had b.b. gun wars. (I still have a small mark on my right wrist where Lauber shot me). I recalled childhood buddy Dan Alff ...