Good afternoon, folks. As Monday steams towards its rugged finish, allow me to touch on a few things that are rattling around the brain at the moment. The reason you aren’t reading this on KSDK News or St. Louis Game Time is simple: I can’t say fuck. In other words, I can’t talk like we all do away from the desk or outside the safe zone. Sure, most of this could be edited down into a family site friendly message, but why not come back on occasion to the place where it all began, and spit a few words out. Let’s run now.

The top ten things that I know this week: (First, a shot of Clint Eastwood for shits and grins)

1. Semi-Trucks and their drivers are assholes. When my son sees one on the highway, he thinks it’s Optimus Prime on a St. Louis mission. I am wondering why he or she is eating in my fucking lane and trying to run me off the road. Optimus wouldn’t do that, but Billy Joe Bob Frank sure likes to hog two lanes at once. Smaller trucks on city streets aren’t nicer; they change lanes at will and have zero fucks to give about the rules of the road. This isn’t shitting on ALL truck drivers. It’s shitting on most of them. Be better.
2. Nashville Predators fans have created a funky dance that is sweeping the na…..or better parts of Tennessee. Everybody else is just shooting them odd looks and wondering what they hell they are doing. I like team passion and all, but if I saw a person this on the street, I’d hit them with a cinder block. Try screaming obnoxiously instead. Same effect.
3. Speaking of Clint Eastwood, there isn’t better Western movie out there than Unforgiven. Eastwood’s done a few of these good man with a guilty heart routines, but his directorial Oscar winning effort is so strong and resonates twenty years later. William Munny is a composite of every Eastwood loner with a gun, and even better constructed. Here’s a guy who didn’t want anything else to do other than tend to his farm animals, look angry, and drink black coffee over his dead wife’s grave. Then he took a job, got on a horse, lost some friends, and picked up a shotgun again. The Rocky angle is undeniable with this story. Eastwood’s Munny walks into the bar for the first time and gets his ass kicked by Gene Hackman’s Little Bill. The next time, he kills every bastard inside the room. Classic Clint. Watch for yourself and try not to feel a surge of lightning through your balls.
4. Last night, four people were killed in St. Louis via gunshot wounds. Four people who got up Sunday thinking everything would be okay and realized at the last second that it wasn’t. I didn’t know either of these people, but it’s still a sad day in the city to see four more violent deaths. Maybe a couple of them were assholes; maybe they were good honest hard working people. St. Louis is becoming a dangerous place.
5. For the second time in a year, The Buffa house is on the market. The Mardel home is for sale, and this time it’s looking better, so come buy the damn thing please. No, we aren’t leaving the city. It’s merely time to upgrade and add a few extra rooms. Perhaps a backyard patio. Selling a house is like selling a car or product. You tell people it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, even though you no longer want a part of it. A family comes by and asks a few questions, and you answer. All you want to do is break even or perhaps net a positive to put down on the next house to lessen the loan. You don’t really own anything in life. You pay a bank to allow you to own it on paper. We will buy another house, and life will go on. Can you tell my wife is doing the house hunting? Stimulating actions…
6. I love baseball, and I also hate it. My second wife is relentless in its nature, and demands more from a soul than any sport. Football happens once a week, so it’s like having your ass kicked once every seven days, so there’s relief periods. Hockey is 2-3 times per week, and is so fast and adrenaline-packed that half the time, a tough loss feels the same as a narrow victory. Baseball is every single day, and up to eight months a year. Open dates are breath-catchers before the next game arrives. Players do well, play like shit, and do well again. Narratives change. Writers are called morons (only half-true) and try to come up with interesting story ideas. The Cardinals started 3-9, then went 18-6, and now have gone 1-4 since. There’s 3/4 of a season left. Anything can happen, and that’s good with “oh shit” mixed in. I don’t pray, but I’ll accept them and whiskey for my future troubles.
7. Speaking of the Cardinals, can we all stop being so fucking sensitive? The Cardinals twitter account put out a message hyping Mother’s Day and a ring giveaway, and produced a message that’s been spread around like wildfire for decades: women like jewelry. Sometimes, women like jewelry and baseball, but there was enough of a fuss that the tweet was deleted and the Cards released an apology. AN APOLOGY for offending the women who love baseball so much, they simply couldn’t fucking handle a quirky tweet. Let’s all just crawl back into our fucking caves so we aren’t offended. Was it a good tweet? No. The Cards twitter person swung and fouled the pitch off the ankle, but did it require an uproar? No. People have grown so vulnerable, and sometimes my sorry ass falls into that group. It may be a birth defect or something. All I know is if the Cardinals promote Father’s Day with a beard trimmer giveaway or a set of barbecue tools, nobody should get offended. There are worse things happening in the world. All lives matter, but all feelings most certainly don’t.
8. Kingdom begins its final season on May 31, and if I haven’t told you this is the BEST SHOW on television right now, let me say it again. No show hits harder than Byron Balasco’s Kingdom. As much about what fighters face outside the ring as they do inside of it, the show creates sizzling human drama and makes you an addict of the sport at the same time. The devotion of the cast and the writing put this series above and beyond 99% of other programs. No time travel or special effects needed. Just dirty whiskey glasses, cauliflower ears, broken hearts, handwrap, and enough rage to fill a Washington D.C. Starbucks. Frank Grillo’s Alvey Kulina is someone you never quite get a handle on, and watch Jonathan Tucker go every which way but loose as Jay Kulina. Kiele Sanchez burns bright as Lisa Prince, the matriarch of Navy Street. Balasco plants seeds for dramatic eruption early in seasons. And there’s fighting. Watch it. No excuses. Turn off Netflix. Turn up Kingdom.
9. I’ll write more about this for KSDK, but I competed in the Battlegrounds Mud Race in Cedar Lake on Saturday. 3.2 miles of military designed obstacles made to test the human spirit and grind your body into a sharpened thread of flesh. I got beat up doing it, and I am in good shape. It had me down in parts and riding high in others. I looked like Arnold at the end of Predator halfway through, and I loved it. Here’s my biggest takeaway: the compassion shown by regular people towards others. If someone couldn’t climb over a post or make it up the rope, someone else reached out and helped. No matter how fucked up and violent this world gets, I still see signs of compassion and grace between human beings. Salute to those brave souls. Every single day is a push towards the light.
10. Finally, I am becoming a huge wine drinker. Thanks Meme and Rachel. I have sucked down more dry red in the past few weeks, but my drug of berry harvested choice these days is Pinot Grigio: a clear yet tasty wine that will topple you over if you allow it. Oh baby, it will. I watched a great boxing flick called Chuck last week, and I had four glasses of Pinot Grigio before. After I left the theater, I still felt it. And it wasn’t overpowering at all. The haze was sublime, and I felt like I had something to offer. Sorry, beer and whiskey. Wine is here to stay, so make room.

That’s all I got tonight. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to wear sunscreen.

Your host,

D.L.B.