Thoughts of a Common Man

So, had to scrape ice off my window on Monday morning. It was only 28 degrees. I thought about crying. My clubs are still sitting in the storage closet. The start of the baseball season has been weird. 15 Yankees have been injured. They’re playing their Triple A team in the majors... ...and they’ve won 9 of 10! The kids are good! We once had a softball team that had a lot of old guys on it. We brought some young kids in and they fired us up. The third thing that I was thinking about Monday was the new Springsteen song. I listened to it on a loop. Can sing it start to finish already. I’m looking at 12 new songs just sitting there. They aren’t available yet. I imagine they’ll drop another couple over the next few weeks, but I won’t have them all until June 14th. Hoping there will be a tour. Going to see The Who next week. Taking it back to 1982. Need another new song! Another 45 degrees. Another Yankees title. Last day of April. May Day.

The Game of Thrones mania is sweeping the nation. We are not involved. Well, most of us.. ...Jake is thoroughly engrossed. “Best show ever!” Is being tossed around a lot. Maybe. I can’t comment either way... ...we’re in the middle of Bosch. Bosch appears a better fit for us. I have never really cared for science fiction or war-type shows. I’ve never seen ‘Saving Private Ryan’ for instance. Like my writing and reading my television and movie tastes are more in line with stories in modern day times. I read Stephen King, of course, and he can get into some ‘out there’ stuff, but he really sells it and his characters are built with modern loves and hates. What bothers me about Games of Thorns is this: The people watching take great pride in saying that they’re watching... ...and the people not watching tell us that too, and kind of ridicule those who are enjoying it. I don’t much care either way. We might get around to it. Might skip it entirely. “Oh my ...

I have learned to mostly ignore the angry tweets, the lies and the stupidity, but I got a little upset on Saturday night after watching a clip of Trump in Green Bay. He was speaking about the liberals and his version of abortion. The lie is vile. He said that mothers deliver their child, the hospital swaddles the child for comfort, and that the doctor and mother then decide to execute the baby. Terrifying. That is NOT happening. Anywhere! There is no doctor in this country who would murder a baby, or perform any such abortion late in term without a viable medical reason centered on saving a life. And what is so upsetting about this was the crowd behind him as he spoke. The easily lied to, certainly manipulated, simplistic crowd of angry, ignorant rage who cheered the lie and who vow to make sure that the practice that isn’t happening, anywhere in this country, is stopped. We’ve currently had a run of mass shootings in places of worship. The demented men who are kill...

I was seated beside a guy who I know voted for Trump when Donald showed up on the television on Friday. “I feel young. I’m a young, vibrant man,” Trump announced. My lunch companion actually groaned. “No longer on the Trump train?” I asked. “He’s so f****ng stupid,” he answered. Announcing that you’re young and vibrant when it’s been noted that you’re working the 11-2 shift every day is a little off. Swearing that you’re in great shape when you’re hugely huge. “I don’t think he thinks we can see him,” my buddy said, and I laughed. Of course, it was all a response into Joe Biden, who is 76 years old, entering the race for president. “Sleepy Joe,” he called him. (The nickname thing is of particular annoyance. It’s like the election for 3rd grade class president, but here we are). And I know that you must be at least 35 years old to be eligible to run for president, but what is the cut off for how old one can be? Isn’t Bernie approaching 80? I’m only 54 years old...

It’s been a long time since Springsteen released new music. Five long years!! Of course, he was on Broadway and that was great, but I have spent a lot of days waiting for new stuff. He writes so well that it inspires me to write as well. Anyway, it started with rumors from Italy. The album that he had in the can was set to be released in June. There was even a rumor of one song being released. Bruce put up a couple of photos of desert landscapes on his Twitter feed and the rumors ran wild. Yesterday morning I saw concrete proof. The new record would be called ‘Western Stars’ and the new song would be ‘Hello Sunshine.’ Damn! I didn’t want to wait to hear it!! Got in the car and turned on E-Street radio and listened to the old classic, ‘Growing Up’ and then the host talked about the new record. And then he played it!! Within three hours, I knew all the words. “Is he coming to Buffalo?” Kathy asked. “I need to see him.” She’s been saying that a lot. The song ...

An Emirati woman woke up out of a coma that she’s been in since a car accident back in 1991. Crazy. She’s actually awake and participating in conversations after being totally out for 28 years. I can’t even imagine. She’d be shocked about a lot of things if she’d been following American culture. “Who’s the American president? Are you freaking kidding me?” “Why is everyone carrying their phone?” “The four-year old kid I was holding is 32?” “Damn! I’m still tired.” I wondered about going out like a light now and waking up at the age of 82 in 2047. She was 32 when she went out. She’s 60 now. That would suck, right? Go to sleep a young woman and wake up as a member of AARP? I guess that she is probably thankful that she’s back with her family, and the amazing thing is that when she came to, she was yelling her son’s name. I’d call that pretty miraculous. The other thing that was mentioned is that she is now able to feel pain. The son? He never gave up. ...

”Did you hear about?” Those are scary words. What usually follows is the sickness of someone we know, or a suicide, or an arrest, or something else that’s awful. I always internalize and imagine the battle that the family is going through and that’s a sad thing too because it’s there when I realize that life is a long, hard test... ...and the prize for playing is usually something rough. It can grind you down and spit you out. If you let it. I have a job that requires a phone that will vibrate, ring or beep every ten minutes. I can really get lost in it. Yet, the beeps that make me move forward come too. “We golfing this weekend?” “Dad, did you see the Warriors game?” “What are we doing for dinner?” Those are mixed in there. Every other week on payday I buy one $10 lottery ticket. Usually I scratch it and throw it out. Last week, I won $50. I used my phone to send a message to Jake. “There’s a scratcher on your desk. It’s yours.” Sometimes I don’t ...

We were watching a cop show. One of the cops was clearing the scene of a drug hit, and he came out of the apartment with a bag of cash. “There has to be a hundred grand there,” the outside cop said. “Maybe one-twenty,” the first cop said. We watched the first cop hand it over and the second cop said: “I’ll book it into evidence.” Yeah. Right. “How much would you keep?” I asked my beautiful wife. “I don’t know.” How about you? You’re in an obvious drug house alone, and you stumble upon $120,000 in small bills. Would you take enough for lunch? Or a car?? Or a condo??? It’s morally wrong, right? I’m a former altar boy. A thoroughly honest guy. Kathy turned it all around. “Would you take some?” I considered it and did all of the math in the given situation. In the imagined scenario I’m a cop who is grossly underpaid. The guy who owns the drug house is dead. He was a bad guy. He made all that cash dealing drugs. The money will be sent to the precinc...

I’m afraid that this will be the question that dominates the news for the next few weeks. Will the house democrats vote to impeach or will they just ignore it and try and put their energies into the 2020 election? It’s an odd situation. There was no hesitation after the Starr report. Clinton was seemingly impeached for far less. By all accounts, this will be something that dogs this administration for however much longer they are in control and there are 14 other ongoing investigations so... ...the chance that there will be any work done is remote at best. The Easter tweets were abysmal. “18 Angry Democrats”. “There’s nothing wrong with getting information from Russia.” Anything to put a positive spin on a very negative report. From this vantage point there’s a real thought that perhaps they should just let it ride. The report speaks for itself. We all saw what was going on. There was absolute obstruction in plain view. But here’s the thing: “You have to stand f...

The Catholic Church was a major part of my early life. I remember playing around the neighborhood as a youngster and talking to the kid who lived up the road. “I don’t ever go to church,” he confessed. I actually thought that was crazy! He was risking eternal damnation!! Like the nuns said, “We should all have an hour a week available for God.” In college, we’d make the trip to the chapel, and of course, we also took religion classes. It was there, however, where I first heard about the priests being a little sketchy in some places. As an adult, we brought the kids to church, and put them through the paces. The pedophile priest talk became a tidal wave. I had a hard time processing that. I’m still really battling what I know to be true. But that’s not what really destroyed me, and made me stay away from gathering with my neighbors. Nope. What destroyed it for me are the people who claim to be “men or women of faith” who have complete disregard for...

Everyone has the days when sleep just doesn’t want to go away. I must admit that lately it’s been harder to drag my butt out of bed, especially late in the week. I still haven’t slept past 7:00 since about 1995, but now, I don’t jump up as if I’ve been shot out of a cannon. Getting old, I guess. Yesterday morning, I felt partly cloudy, but I was at a client’s office by about 7:30, and I went straight to the coffee pot. I was halfway through the cup when he said: “Want a coffee?” “I’m beat,” I said. “Friday takes a month to get here every week.” “And this is Good Friday!” He said. I smiled. “What?” “Just the mention of ‘Good Friday’ took me back to my altar boy days,” I said. “You? You were an altar boy?” We laughed. “Man, Good Friday was all about the stations of the cross,” I said. “When you’re just a kid, an hour at mass seems like a year. Up, down, prayer, blessing, onto the next station.” “I was an altar boy too,” the guy confessed. “There are at least 15 ...

I read the Mueller report. Thing is, none of it was actually surprising. The entire thing played out in real time and we had a front row seat. The behavior then was disgusting, vile and unbefitting the highest office in the land. What has happened since we heard it had been submitted is even more alarming to me. William Barr is the attorney general. He is not the lawyer for the president. He either lacks basic reading comprehension skills or he wanted to trick the public into the exact opposite of what the report actually said. The mantra has been and will continue to be “No Collusion, No Obstruction.” The exact opposite is true. There is a ton of evidence there. Simple reading comprehension at a 7th grade level will get you there, but one of the single greatest lines ever was sung by Mellencamp and I think of it often: “People believe what they want to believe when it makes no sense at all.” People will believe the “No Collusion, No Obstruction” chant when all it...

I really can’t believe that the politicians, on both sides of the aisle, actually get paid for the “work” they do. Seems to me that their entire day is spent spinning stories and telling lies about one thing after another. I seriously can’t listen to it anymore and it hurts my heart because it’s such garbage and it’s tearing us apart. Instead, I listen to baseball news between 7 and 9 in the morning and then I switch over to Dan Patrick who talks sports and everything else. At noon, I check the headlines. Rick Santorum was the first voice I heard: “We won’t learn anything from the Mueller report,” he said. “It’s old news.” Really? A report that only Barr (who was hired to hide the report) has seen will be released and nothing will be learned? And it’s all such garbage. “Hardworking American taxpayers reaped the benefits of the new tax bill,” Mitch McConnell lied. The numbers say otherwise. I saw an overview of Fox News blasting Obama during his presidency for, g...

I can’t be sure that it isn’t going to snow anymore, but I see my golf clubs, and I definitely think I’ll be swinging them before any of a dozen Yankees comes off the injured list. Thing is, I also took a good look around at the house and yard over the weekend, and there’s a lot of digging out that needs to be done. The joint needs some work! The wood on the trim is in rough shape and needs paint. The weeds and leaves and other assorted muck has filled the landscaped areas. My driveway has even more cracks. The basketball hoop needs a new net. And don’t even get me started on the garage. They broke the cover for the hot tub. There are an awful lot of beverage containers strewn about, and we have the old rug stored out there and have to wait until big garbage pickup. When I was a kid we used to go to the dump every Saturday. Some days we’d make multiple trips with a pickup truck loaded with materials. I learned to drive at the dumps. I also sat on my Dad’s lap and st...

Everything crumbles. I’ve thought about those two words a lot. It’s the way life was designed. Nothing lasts forever. But the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral was shocking in that it’s a structure that’s stood the test of time... ...dating back more than 700 years! I’ve never been there, but judging by my social media accounts, millions of Americans have visited. The art is priceless. The architecture is tremendous. To see the spires collapse. Pretty heartbreaking stuff. The main structure was saved, but the damage will be too much to measure. So, everything crumbles, but buildings can be restored. They’ll rebuild it. It’ll be better than new, but you can’t help but feel that some of that ancient history will be lost. It’s been a weird couple of years, hasn’t it? It feels to me that we are losing things. I wonder what is being lost here in America and it truly saddens me. We are going to spend two years hearing about lawsuits that are designed solely to hi...

I have a complicated relationship with Tiger Woods. He had his well-documented personal problems, and he was tied to A-Rod’s steroid doctor... ...but like everyone else, I can’t take my eyes off of him when he’s playing golf. “How’d Tiger do?” And everyone who follows golf knows... ...and so do many who have never played a round. “Tiger is tied for the lead,” I said, on Sunday morning. “He’s down one,” my wife said. Sure enough, he was, but I flipped over from the Yankees game and Tiger was on the green and he made a putt. He was up two. It’s been 14 years since he last won the Masters. It’s a hell of an achievement. His back was an absolute mess for a long, long time. His wife gave him the well-deserved boot. He couldn’t make it work with Lindsey Vonn. I was pretty sure that he was done. “He’s too old. The young guys hit it as far as he does. No one is afraid of him anymore.” Turns out I was wrong. The guys he was playing with on Sunday didn’t play well...

Started hearing noises in the wall above my bed. Like little pattering of feet. “What the hell is that?” A bird? On the roof? It got worse. By Friday night it grew readily apparent that something was in the house, behind the walls. It got loud. I texted my brothers, knowing that they would bust my chops for having no idea what to do, and then they would help. “You need to find the hole.” On Saturday morning, I went out and took a look. Finding the hole wasn’t a problem. As I was looking at the hole, and wondering how I’d get up there to close it, I saw the freaking squirrel 🐿! The little bastard was poking his head out. “I have a trap, I don’t have a ladder that high,” my brother John said. I thought of a construction buddy. He texted back immediately. Ten minutes later he was there. John was placing the trap. The ladder went up and they sent me to Home Depot for foam to seal the hole. As I was driving away, I looked back. There was the squirrel ...

Watched the 20/20 episode on the murder of the young actress Rebecca Schaeffer. I remembered the story. How sad. It was way before the stalker laws. In fact, a lot of the laws got their start after a crazed fan knocked on her door and shot the poor kid dead. You hear a lot of things about how people are too sensitive these days, but, and the famous should be aware of this, there are a whole lot of troubled people out there and these people have easy access to weapons. Thirty years ago. I can’t believe that so much time has passed, but as I was watching the show I was also scrolling twitter and there was a presidential tweet where video of the destruction of 9/11 was shown to politicize a statement from a member of Congress. That’s simply dangerous. Obviously that congresswoman didn’t have anything to do with a terror attack from 18 years ago. She wasn’t sympathetic to the attackers either. Instead, what she said was to be construed in the worst possible w...

Whenever I have to fly for work we have a joke about cashing in on the life insurance. “Landed. No life insurance claim,” is how I normally phrase it. Sometimes it comes back: “Darn.” Boston to Buffalo is a quick flight and normally it doesn’t even cross my mind that planes do sometimes crash. Honestly, I never think about it at all. On Wednesday evening I got on the plane with the plan to read a little and maybe sleep for a few minutes. My headphones were on the fritz so I didn’t have music, but it’s only an hour or so... ...how bad could it be? I forgot about annoying bastards who like to talk. The two guys behind me hit it off. So, I had to listen to the “What do you do? Are you married? Do you have kids? Trump is something, huh?” “Shut-up! Shut-up!! Shut-up!!!” I never told them to shut-up and they didn’t. I seriously wondered, at one point, if they were falling in love. I haven’t said that much to my beautiful wife since about ‘97. I read until I felt a littl...

I haven’t had to travel quite as much in the last little while, but I needed to make a run to a site in Boston so I had my travel agent (Kathy) book an in and out for yesterday. The flight in was uneventful and I made the journey to the rental car place. There was a nice, older woman behind the counter. “Good morning, handsome,” she said. I turned to look behind me. “No, you!” She said, with a laugh. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like someone?” I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about so I just kinda’ made a noise. She got to work at booking my vehicle. “Gotta’ find you a car,” she said. I thought about the episode of ‘Seinfeld’ where he says, “You know how to take a reservation. You don’t know how to make one.” Thankfully, the wait wasn’t too long. She pushed the paperwork to me. “I got you a Jaguar,” she said. “Huh?” “Be careful, good-looking. It’s a beauty.” The woman was obviously a whack job, but she gave me a Jaguar! I had a grand tota...

Maybe I’m getting old. My beautiful wife mentioned that perhaps there’s such a thing as male menopause. Maybe that’s it, but I’ve done something unusual. You see, I started writing books at the age of 22. For the last 32 years, I’ve worked on one thing after another with hardly ever taking much of a break. I have 13 published, 2 more fairly complete, about 5 that I wrote and sat on, and about 7 or 8 that I thought about, outlined and wrote a bunch of pages. Sometimes I think about picking those up again. The very first one I ever wrote is about 400 pages long. It’s under my bed, all printed out. I never sent it anywhere. I wonder what that looks like! Thing is, I’ve never once reread any of them. I was never tempted to, even when someone presented me with an award, or when people reached out to praise my work. A few weeks ago, I read, “In Real Life” and I enjoyed it. So, I picked up another one: “Everything I Know.” My most recent publication. I wrote it 2-3 years...

I buy the newspaper every day. It brings great excitement to me and my dogs. “I got the paper!” Melky and Paris love hearing me say it. They jump around after I make the announcement. I’m not sure why I’m still buying the paper every morning. Like everyone else, I read a lot of my news on my phone. I don’t even touch the front page. I usually read the local news as I eat lunch, and the sports at dinner. Yet, the front page usually catches my eye as I pay the $1.50 for a paper that’s half the size it used to be when it was a quarter. (Sound like an old man there, right?) The thing is, the front page caught my eye on Monday morning. There was a photo of a child. The headline proclaimed that the poor kid was killed by a stray bullet. It only made the front page because it was a child because every weekend there are countless murders in countless cities... ..and we shrug it off. So many black kids are senselessly murdered in gang-related violence. “We know whe...

It’s absolutely amazing, actually. I’ve said a whole lot negative about Trump, of course, but man, he can manipulate the narrative. Let’s talk about the taxes: “I will release them. Certainly. As soon as they’re done auditing me.” That was four years ago! This week his people are saying that they’ll take the fight to the Supreme Court to stop their release. He turned it all into a talk about how he’s being harassed! Then the Mueller report. No one has actually seen it except for the guy he hired to hide it. It’s a report that everyone was waiting for! Now he says, “no one needs to see it.” “I’m innocent!” Oh, okay. Thanks for letting us know. Can we see it? No! Stop harassing me!! The most alarming of all things, though, is the 3rd thing that no one wants to ever discuss. He’s a mess! He slurs his words, makes up words, can’t speak a coherent sentence, lies and then swears he never said it... ...even though it’s on tape! And some people act like it’s...

As you know, I love my massage therapist. I missed my appointment two weeks ago because of illness so it’s been a full month since I visited with her. She was working on my right calf when she asked. “Are you feeling  all right?” “No more shittier than usual,” I said. “Why?” “Your ankles are swollen and there’s a lot of swelling in your back.” “Eh, what’re you going to do?” “You’re in your 55th year, not your 25th year,” she said. “So, you gotta’ work a little harder.” She did. I was vastly improved when I walked out of there. “Try not to destroy it all in one day,” she said. I heard from my brother about a half hour later. We talked about his physical ailments and a recent surgery of an out of town family member. It was a particularly invasive surgery on a pretty good guy who is too young to battle such a thing. “Cancer sucks,” Jim said. “Nice to live your life and get that as a consolation prize, huh?” We talked about stretching exercises and dietary c...

Back when I was a student, I was always really good at taking tests. I scored very well on my SAT’s and never actually panicked when we had the mid-terms or the final exams. I bring it all up because I had a bunch of guys in front of me taking a construction safety test. The rules were, you can talk to each other, look it up on the phone, or use the book I had that has all the rules in it. Then I sat back and listened. Some guys, when it was their turn, struggled to read the question. Others wanted to just guess at the answer. One guy pretended that he knew everything about everything, and he got virtually every one wrong. But I liked his confidence! I let them take a stab at it, and then I jumped in. “I hate taking tests,” one guy said. “That’s why I became an equipment operator.” And it’s odd for me to see it from his point-of-view. I didn’t struggle much when it came to school, and I have learned to read the questions and let them answer as a group because I once...

Mickey Mantle played his entire career with a torn ACL. If a Yankees player sneezes these days he’s sent to the MRI Tube. Then they are placed on the IL... ...which is now the Injured List instead of the Disabled List (which it was for years!) They say it’s 10 days, but not with the Yankees. Aaron Hicks has a sore back... ...he hasn’t picked up a bat since February 1. Jacoby Ellsbury has shin splints or something like that and he hasn’t played in 2 freaking years! So, the lineup is now the Triple A lineup. They struck out 18 times on Wednesday!!! That’s not Triple A, that’s little league! And the thing is, I don’t really care yet. They’ll be fine, but things are magnified in March/April. So far, the Yankees, Astros and Suck Sux have a combined record of 6 wins and 14 losses. They’ll be the three best teams. If they don’t just take the year off! “What’s wrong with YOUR Yankees?” I’ll get asked. “R-E-L-A-X!” They’re 2 games out with 156 left! They do...

We always need a go-to show for those moments when there’s nothing on television except Law & Order SVU. (I hate that show. The other Law & Orders are okay, but I actually root for Liv & Elliott to get gunned down). Anywhoha... ...we found a series about witness protection... ...In Plain Sight... ...and it’s good enough. Funny, decent drama, a running story. The best part of all? There’s like 5 seasons... ...so no worrying about flipping around. I do a lot of other things with the television on... ...write, read, keep an eye on baseball, answer emails, set up my schedule, play with the dogs. But it got me thinking of other shows. We watch “This Is Us.” Sometimes it’s a little syrupy. I still like Modern Family... ...it’s the only decent comedy. (I got tired of Leonard and Sheldon and the gang sometime in the first season). Yet, in Saturday morning, when I still wasn’t feeling great, there was a King of Queens marathon on. I laughed out lo...

I was a little confused when I heard about the murder of rapper Nipsey Hussle. Seems I’d confused him with the old comedian Nipsey Russell who I remembered from the old game shows. I’d never heard of the rapper, but then I read all about the guy, and what a shame it is that he was gunned down in L.A. There was an outcry. Even LeBron chimed in. It seems that he was a integral part of the community. He tried his best to make changes. My boys would be the judge of it all. “Did you hear about Nipsey?” Jake asked, as soon as I walked in. “I did hear about it,” I said. Jake showed me a clip of an anti-Trump song. The rappers have always included Trump in their lyrics. In the old days, they’d sing about his money, and now they sing about how much they can’t stand him. Sam joined the conversation. “I knew who he was, but never listened to him.” “The government killed him,” their friend, Ben, said. “He made a documentary about Big Pharma. He pissed...

The final seconds ticked off the clock, knocking Duke (my bracket pick) out of the tournament. A few minutes later, Tulo struck out with two on to give the Orioles (of all teams) an opening series win over the Yankees. My phone vibrated: “Taxes.” One simple word displayed on my screen. “Oh sh*t,” I said. Kathy looked concerned. “Are you sitting down?” My accountant said. I laughed. Funny guy. He says the same thing every year. He asked me a couple of questions and then told me about Jake & Sam and their returns. I felt myself actually holding my breath. Then he mentioned our returns. “Someone adjusted your withholdings, which was good.” Now, it’s different than other years, but we didn’t get crushed, like I thought we might. I was glad I was sitting down. Yet, the tax man knocking at the door is a generations old fear for the working man... ...must be nice to be rich or “smart” enough to not have to worry about paying any. I thought about Amazon ...

Things have been a little rough in Kathy land. She’s been battling the flu and cold for about a month. Then I got the cold right as the NCAA Tourney started, but everyone was caught up in the pool we were all in and the games. My bracket was in first place for the entire week. “We’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I never come close,” my beautiful wife whined. “It’s fun,” I said. “It’s ten bucks.” “I ain’t doing it next year.” I figured that it was just the illness talking. Then, a funny thing happened. An upset on Thursday shook up the standings and while I was still in first on Saturday... ...I was tied... ...with Kathy. At Saturday morning breakfast, she was excited. She asked me about the games coming up and we went over the possibilities. “You’re in good shape to the end as long as Gonzaga wins.” We made fun of the boys who, every time they brought up the games, were dismissed as clueless. “What’s going on?” Sam asked. “Just the co-leaders ha...