conflict and scotch 

I have been to a few concerts in my life, but for some reason something always went wrong. I once stood on a ledge outside the mezzanine section in Madison Square Garden to watch Bob Segar. I hovered there, my right arm locked around the railing, as I listened to the music and tried very hard not to fall to my death into the crowd below. I ended up in t...

I hate my name. I have hated my name my entire life. In fact, I hated my name even before I was born. When my mother was pregnant she carried me for ten months - I knew what was waiting for me and I didn't want to come out. In my childhood I was often compared to ...

I have been in three major car accidents in my life - two of my own making and a passenger in the third. Having survived all three I have always felt that I am not going to die in one - I just hope God doesn't ta...

It was the summer of '84, the Tuesday after Memorial Day, and it was my first day at work. I was standing in my new boss' office, soaked to the skin, my hair matted down on my forehead, shiv...

When you think of kids' sleigh riding, you might picture a Currier and Ives print of children innocently navigating a hill of snow. When we sledded as kids it was down the middle of the street, any ...

I think God wants me to be rich. He keeps trying to give me money.

Late-morning of Super Bowl Sunday I had breakfast with my sister Diane and her son Dante at a local diner. The...

Everyone had a favorite bar growing up, a place you could go to anytime and you'd be sure some of your friends would be there (that does make us sound like alcoholics). For me, that...

I am not a big sports fan.  I can’t quote stats and say who the Super Bowl MVP was in 1993.  Except for the one year I was in a fantasy football league and could sit in a bar and say, ‘Freaking Aikman throws more interceptions than touchdowns, he’s killing me.  Carney gets four field goals and I still lose’. Outburst like that would make my friends  turn and say, “Who the hell are you and what have y...

From the time I separated from my wife to the time I settled into my current townhouse, I moved four times within six months. I was very fortunate that my friends were there for me - even moving me a few days after Hurricane Floyd (1999) devastated the town I was moving from and there were no truck rentals available. We had a caravan of mini-vans crawling through the piles of my neighbors' belongings that were destroyed by the flood. It l...

When I first was separated from my ex-wife, Arlene, my three kids were all under ten years old. When Christmas came around that year I knew it was going to be hard - maybe not so much for the kids, but for me (selfish).

Christmas with the kids had always been Arlene and I wrapping their presents after they had all gone to bed. We drank red wine and watched A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sims (all others truly pale ...

I would like to say that growing up in an Italian-American family, with all the wonderful food at holiday dinners, was very important to me. I would like to say that but the truth is, I am a horrible Italian-American. I loved getting together with family, seeing my Grandmother, my Aunts and Uncles, and especially my cousins but when it came to the food, I was terrible. I was an adopted loaf of white bread in a family of exquisite pastries.

My mother was a wonderful...

Sometimes a man longs for the life he had before marriage, the house, and the kids filled his days. Back to the time before everything was about possession (both getting and keeping them). If that sounds like you then I am here to help. I have discovered the secret on how to recapture the days of your youth, a time where the future was still unwritten. Want to know the secret?

Get divorced.

It's as simple as that - yo...

With all that has happened (and is happening) down the Jersey shore, I can’t help myself but to think about all the time I spent down there. Ghosts of my youth can be found up and down the shoreline.

In 1979 we stepped up our presence down the Jersey shore – eight of us rented a house for the entire summer in Seaside and not just for the one week like we normally did. It was on Franklin Avenue just a half block from the boa...

It is Monday night, and I am sitting here in New Jersey waiting for Hurricane Sandy to reach landfall. As I write this, the wind is rattling my windows and the leaves scurry down the street like frightened villagers chased by King Kong. As a parent, at times like these, your first concern is that your children are safe.

My youngest son, Danny, goes to school at Rowan University which is right in the hurricane's path. I called him on Sunday, bef...

I am amazed that siblings growing up in the same house could be so different from one another. My daughter, Amanda, my sons, Alexander and Danny, may share a common genetic code, but that’s about it. You can tell they are related but I knew watching them grow up, they weren’t the same.

To illustrate this, I go back to one afternoon when I was still married. I walked into the house with the three of them and sitting o...

I remember the day I got engaged. It was Friday, Oct. 9, 1987. Ten-Nine-Eight-Seven. It was also the day I was promoted at work. Arlene and I opened a bottle of champagne for the promotion and, while sipping our glasses on the couch, I thought, "what the hell?" I went into the bedroom, retrieved the ring from my sock draw, got down on one knee, and asked Arlene to marry me. She said yes (damn).

We were going to Boston ...

The first thing I need to say is that Boots and Sparkle are not strippers.

Let me explain.

When I first thought about writing this blog, I wanted the stories to be real. With real stories come real people; people in my family, my friends, co-workers, and women that I have dated (or tried to date). With real stories, and real people, come real names and I wondered if that was going to be a problem.

I have been accused of trying to kill my youngest son, Danny. Not that I would murder him, more like 'No good deed goes unpunished'. It is just happenstance that Danny is with me when these opportunities to do good have occurred.

Maybe it goes back to my father who, when younger, was a lifeguard. By the time I came along he no longer looked like a lifeguard (more like what I look like today). In...

 In the 70s and 80s we owned the Jersey Shore; it was our playground, our education. Manasquan was Middle School, Seaside was High School, and Belmar was College.Today, watching MTV’s Jersey Shore is like watching a girl you were in love with in High School and seeing that she married an asshole. I was down in Seaside over the summer, and I felt the end was near when one of the...