It's true, you can too cool for your kids. My eldest is 14 and in the youth group at the Unitarian Church on Elmwood. My ex serves as one of the group's advisors. Each year the youth take over the Sunday service. I always look forward to it because it is one service that is honest and from the heart. Besides, it's one of the few times that the Grateful Dead, White Stripes and Black Eyed Peas feature in the hymns.

Anyway the kids come out and line the front of the church for the duration of the service. There is a section for quiet contemplation/meditation. My ex and I get along very well. She came up to me and asked if I'd pitch in at this spot. It became clear what she meant momentarily. The music the kids chose was Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" as interpreted by Johnny Cash. It's a great record with a baseline that can inspire the most rythmically challenged into a healthy bout of "White Man's Overbite." A few of the kids start getting into it. The group at one end including my child looked more like they were waiting for the song to end. My ex sprung into action, tossing a few precussion instruments to some and grabbing one young man into a dance. As she and her partner start up, my daughter eyes find mine. I feel that tell tale smirk coming across my eyes. She is suffering teenage mortificiation. As my ex started to briefly head in my direction, I thought my child was going to have a stroke.

Lucky for her, the song ended.

She recovered enough after the service to introduce me to her mom's dance partner. "You're the dude who hooked her up with U2?" I nod yes. He started to walk away. He leans back to my daughter: "Your parents are so cool."

The look on her face made my day.

Just lost my post

Nothing to see here

Show's over

Move along

The recent wave of folks making the leap to 30 got me thinking. I wonder sometimes if we think too hard about the number of our ages in correlation to how we ought to behave.

I work with a woman who turned 35. We get along really well and do good work, but she was bumming because she was holding herself to one of those lists we all make about "by the time I'm (fill in age here), I want to do this and this........" I tried to tell her that you can't hold yourself to those standards because everybody who makes those lists usually makes them at a time when your biggest concern is how much beer money you have for the weekend. I think that helped along with if she wanted I could started "acting 42." She declined which is good, because I really don't know how.

Age is truly relative. I guess I feel lucky, because I was always one step ahead of all the drinking age changes. A family friend complained to me that he couldn't do something now that he was 56, even though nothing changed from 55. I was at another gathering where a doddering old woman of 27 was looking for help since she was no longer 26. I did the gentlemanly thing and offered to take her out back and shoot her. You're never too old to have a drink come out your nose.

I guess it makes me think that sometimes limitations surrounding age are sometimes self inflicted.

I was in Frizzy's a few months back with some people I used to work with at the Adelphia call center. Outkast came over the pa and somebody asked what the name of the song was. Without thinking, I piped up and said "Roses." The entire group was staring at me dumbstruck that I, teetering on the brink of old farthood in their eyes, would know that. A brief pause and I was pronouced "cool."

In the distance, I could hear my daughter cringing. Maybe it's because I have a few more miles on me than the bulk of the epeeps, but the numbers are just numbers that's all. It's the people who matter.

End of sermon

(An unintentional present for Jenks's birthday)


A man goes to see the doctor and tells the doc that his penis has turned orange.

The doctor looks at it and says, "I haven't ever seen any thing like this before in my entire medical career. What do you do for a living? Do you work around any hazardous materials?" The man says no.

The doctor asks the man what he does all day. The man responds, "Nothing." The doctor is really puzzled now and says, "You can't not do anything. What do you do at home all day?"

The man replies, "Honestly, doc I, don't do anything. I just sit around, watch porno flicks and eat Cheetos."

besides something jailable (credit to Bull on the Edge - He sent this to me, it's an interesting take)

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays .60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are 76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.

The huge egg farms sells 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times
when family cooking, baking, etc.happen.
This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen The man says,"there must be something we can do about the price of eggs".

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.
To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free".

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3 eggs at a time".
"Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents.
The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while.

And them chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.
Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.
What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down

Think about it.
As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas,that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down..

I launder.

The need for quarters renders a dryer that much less efficient.

I wanted the Sabres to play the Senators so I could get a few more days off from double duty.

I had to sit in on a teleconference call today and the only thing I got out of it was a nice Fat Bob's lunch ( and pulled pork leftovers for dinner yum )

I was the only person to acknowledge that the panel of the teleconference was a collection of blowhards teaching us remedial marketing.

My boss wanted to say that but couldn't

At ethecarey's indirect suggestion, I took a glass of wine out onto my porch last night and stargazed for the duration of my wine glass. Both the westerly sky and the pinot noir were nice toppers to the night. I'm not sleeping real well, but a little star seeking is a nice relaxer. There was a certain tranquility if you could avoid looking east at Timon Towers -- One building I don't need to see shadows on the shades.

Happy Birthday Jenks (in case I can't get to the pc on Friday night)

My 8 year old son competed in a very stuffy and packed Tae Kwan Do tourney on Saturday. He took second place in forms. I won't trouble you with the details, but he had to do a routine and it wound up in front of about 200 people. Each contestant is supposed to identifiy themselves, their school and what they are about to perform to a judging panel of 3. To untentionally make matters worse, my x and I were standing right behind the judges. The little man never noticed. He looked the lead judge right in the eye, said his piece and threw down.

I couldn't help but be impressed. He had more focus at 8 than I think I have now. I was able to savor an unexpected ticket to the Goo Goo Dolls show that much more.

In other news, I think I have to add Cobblestone to the list of places drink worthy. I dunno if it was the sunshine, the need to feed my ego a
cold one, but there was something restoritive about having a couple beers after the festivites at the arena.

No shame in getting shot down, I would have hated myself for not trying.

In other news, my boss ( a lovely woman) is having breakfast with her soon to be boss after Adelphia gets peddled at the end of July. I have reason to believe that I might come up in conversation. Apparently they like my ad work.

Here's hoping......

can sometimes cure what ails you, at least temporarily. Pay day permitted to indulge in new ones from The Flaming Lips, the Goo Goo Dolls, Neil Young and the folkie album from Springsteen. All are suprisingly worthwhile.

My cd changer is once again a very schizophrenic device, yet happily so. Nothing like some fresh tunes to assist your outlook.

Spot the Monkey!

In the spirit of all those peeps who haven't been getting any, I actually asked somebody out. Actually, I asked her answering machine out for drinks and am still sitting here waiting for some indication that the answering machine was good enough to pass along the message. Been two days, so I don't think the machine was impressed.

This was somebody who I thought we were getting along with through our mutual work at the Sabres games. She sort of hinted that I should join her for drinks at some point. During a promotion that I was working on for the premiere of the Sopranos, I had to sport a Sopranos Hockey jersey. She saw this and wanted one. Me, being a sucker for bright eyes and a killer smile, found one out and she gave me a clench worthy of "the war is over" Life magazine covers which did wonders for my self esteem. Being accosted in front of any number of prying eyes is funny like that. She followed up with a thank you card with some lottery tickets inside. One was a winner for $20.00. I called her up to say thanks and stumbled through an invite to come drink the winnings at cobblestone.

So far, no response. Do I call again? or is that too much like creepy stalker guy? If it's a polite, no thanks, I can take it. My ego has withstood similar assaults and here I stand.

Like George Carlin says, you got to "take a fucking chance."

Just wished I had something to show for it.