Friends Part 1

This weeks episode revolves around some of the many friends I've had in my life.  There are many more stories to come and we will see this topic and its deeper stories again.  Maybe even a follow up with some of the original players.

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Just did it again. Okay, well, hello. This is Matt Stoltman again. Welcome to the Losing Ticket, episode two. Uh hopefully you guys listened to the first episode, which was on my former Facebook group, the South Buffalo Neighborhood Watch. Uh, after talking with some of the participants, that is definitely gonna be a part two, maybe even a part three, who knows? The key key players in that are also gonna come and join us sometime and do a follow-up because they have some of their favorite stories to tell, and some of them I don't even remember. So hopefully we get another podcast or two of some gold from those great days. And I was corrected. So it actually was uh during Trump's administration, so it was like 2019, 2018 and 19, going into 20. But anyway, we'll we'll we'll touch back on that at a later time. So today's episode, this week's episode, is gonna be on friends, my friends particularly, and I'm gonna take uh a journey from my childhood through my teenage years into my adult years, and uh including some people that are very, very um important in my life, which is uh people that I met in my various jobs. So uh I guess I'm gonna start things off right now by starting where it all began. And I guess I could you could say that is my early childhood years. So I grew up, I was born and raised uh in South Buffalo, New York, on a street called Ashton. And I just uh was about to turn five years old uh when we moved there, and my very, very first friend who I know and talk to to this day is um still lives on the street. His name is Tom. I uh met him, his next door neighbor, Chris, and my across the street neighbor, Michelle, who uh we were really very tight. We did uh hide and go seek and uh guns and freeze tag and all the things that you did as a uh as a little kid. But uh as we got older, things tended to get a little bit more developed and and friendships got and bonds got a little bit stronger. So uh to this day, like um, you know, I look back very fondly with my years, and I'll I'll go one at a time uh with Michelle. Uh ironically, I married a Michelle, but uh this Michelle was a very much tomboy. She was probably of the four of us the toughest one. She uh she definitely had no qualms and and and throwing a couple punches. I punched her many a times, and she's punched me many a times. Um now that didn't mean that we didn't love each other, obviously. I mean, we were all best friends, I guess you could say, growing up. And what's funny about that is that uh as we ended up going to the same high school, she was notorious in our high school as being probably the well, definitely the toughest girl, but probably one of the toughest students. And she intimidated the hell out of a lot of people, and yet I would be the one person that basically go up to her and call her a uh you know a slur or a nickname or something to that effect, and and she would she would get away with it, or I would get away with it, that is. Um funny story with Michelle once as we were playing hide and go seek in her house, and I don't even know if anybody knows the story except for Michelle and I. But um I was hiding in the basement, and I sat oddly enough, I sat in like this puddle of oil, or some grease, or something like that, and it totally ended up destroying my my pants or shorts or whatever I was wearing at the time, and her mother put me into one of Michelle's outfits so that I can walk across the street, and it ended up being like a skirt. So when Michelle, if I do see Michelle, and I haven't seen her unfortunately in many, many years, but whenever I was able to cross paths with her throughout the last 40 years, I guess, uh curtain dress is what we refer to it as because it looked like one of those 1970s curtains with flowers and just plaid, you know, striping and stuff like that. But yeah, so it wasn't the first it wasn't the only time I wore a dress in my life, but it was definitely the first. But um, yeah, Michelle was a tough one, and uh I hope she's doing very well. But um, yeah, she definitely toughened me up. I didn't have a brother, and uh, I guess she would about have been her and Tom and Chris would have been like the closest ones to it, but she definitely toughened me up. Uh speaking about the other guys, like so Tom. Tom was the first one I actually met on uh on the street, and uh he had older brothers and they were uh bad. They were bad, they were wise asses. I think I would like to say that I developed some of my uh skills due to them and their non-stop and continuous uh ribbing and uh you know negative feedback that they would give you no matter what time of the day or where you were. Uh but they also introduced me to some really good things, and that is bands like Rush, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Sabbath, you know, those types of bands. Because growing up, my father and my mother they were like the the polar opposites. My mom loved the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and softer 60s music, I guess. Like, you know, and my father liked the stones and the who and the doors, and I still love all that music, but we didn't really listen to a lot of modern music. But I got that when I was over at Tom's house or Chris's house, um, who had an older brother as well who listened to all that. And throughout the childhood, or throughout my childhood, that is, you know, Tom and Chris most more than likely were always hanging out, playing street hockey, getting into trouble. I guess you could say every year that every summer that uh that I went through as a child, I always seemed to get grounded at least two good weeks. Um whether it was like given my given my babysitter the middle finger on a dare by either Chris or Tom. Uh there was one time, and I don't know where you're from, and if you've had this individual go down your street, part of my childhood, and that's Mr. Softie. And so Chris and I were on his porch and we drew like the Mr. Softy truck. And instead of like ice cream and sundays and banana splits and and shit like that, we were like putting crap and shit and poo and stupid, you know, eight, nine, ten-year-old words, you know, swear words down. And we're laughing her asses off. And then uh Mrs. Fuchs comes outside and she's like, Whoa, what are you guys laughing at? And we're not like, you know, then like like idiots, because we didn't know how to like you know, deviate and reflect or deflect at that point in time, you know, we we say, Oh, nothing, nothing. And she looked at it and she walked down to my house and told my mother, and that was two weeks I was spent in the middle of the summer in my house, and sure as shit, two days later I see Chris Fuchs ride his bike back and forth uh in front of the house, and there I am stuck. So my mom always stuck to her guns, unfortunately. But um, and you would think, you know, did you learn your lesson? Yeah, but the very next summer I always tended to do something else. Like there was a time where uh we had older kids, and this is like when breakdancing was uh really big, and they were like a bunch of Arabs and black kids that lived on the street next to us, and they had uh a sheet of linoleum on the street, this cross street called Zolers, and they're breakdancing, they got the big boom box, and they're breakdancing, and they're I grew up knowing those guys very well, and and they were really cordial, but like when you're a little kid, we were just a dumb kid, right? And they were teenagers, and uh they're breakdancing, and and Tom and Chris and I are like, you can't rap or you can't break dance, and they came chasing us and they caught Chris, which is odd, because I was definitely the slowest one. But you know, we got in trouble, and that was another grounding for me, you know, because we're it was weird. Like you're you're uh you're making fun of the the local punks, you know. That's basically why I got grounded on that one. When we got a little older, we got a little bit more uh devious. We my friend Garen, who was also part of the group to a lesser degree, was really big into making haunted houses. He would go up into his attic and he would like have like a walk through haunted houses before it was a thing in like today's world, and we would get the little kids to walk through it and we'd put on masks and scare the shit out of them. My sisters were usually the unintended or the intended victims and her friends, their friends. But um, we would then get bored with that, and then we would take those masks and we would take like uh uh shirts and pants and fill them up with the leaves in the fall and then put the mask on or the mannequin heads that we had. I believe it was like one of those Barbie heads that little girls would have where you could do their hair. Uh Garen had like a sister who like threw it out or was going to throw it out, so we used that and we put like blood on it and stuff. But we would lay these things in the street so cars would go by and they would see like a body in the street. And you'd say, okay, well, you're 10, you're doing that. Yeah, but I was doing that at 11, 12, probably even 13. And I remember the one time this guy called the cops, and we uh there was there were so many of us doing various things in the street. So the cops came and we all scattered. And I'm with my friend Tom, and I just said, you know what, stop running, and then let's walk towards the cops like we're just going down the street, like we're just like just act innocent, like walk like we're walking down the street. So the cop goes barreling down Barilla and he slows down to see us, and we're like talking. I'm like, just talk like we're talking. Just you know, like I think I actually that's what I said, just talk like we're talking. And the cop just slowed down, looked at us, and kept going because we weren't running. So maybe that was where I started to learn to be a little bit more deceptive and uh getting away with bloody murder sometimes. But those were some good times. Chris was oh, Chris was also a great smart ass. See, we loved um we loved movies like Fletch and anything where somebody was like like Chevy Chase had so many good little lines. Um so Chris, like we you know, we would go out as you got a little older, we would take the the metro downtown, and there's like this one uh this one example where like this guy came on the bus with like all these cans. Because I think you know, maybe in the some point in the 80s, late 80s, they started putting like the deposits on on bottles and cans. So this guy gets on the bus, and I think we're going downtown to go to like the movies or something, or maybe uh what was that restaurant? Uh the chicken place. So we would go to Swiss Allah. But um so we're on a bus and we're we're heading downtown, and we're probably like in I don't know, tenth grade. And and this guy gets on the bus and he has a big bag of cans. Like if you guys ride the metro, if somebody drove I don't know, people don't seem to do that as much anymore. But um back in the day, the bench rode, the bench um ride on a metro was a was an event in of itself. If I wanted material for a uh podcast, I should basically just be riding the metro and doing it from there. But uh this guy gets on the bus and he's got this absolutely enormous bag, I think it maybe maybe even two bags of cans. Like, how the hell is he gonna be able to get on with this? But he does. And he sits right up in front of Chris and I because we're like sitting in those like candy cap seats where you you sit like facing each other. And we're like, we want to laugh, because who knows? Yeah, we're dumb. And the guy looks at Chris and goes, Are you in the club? And Chris goes, What, the collect the can club? You know, and I then I just start laughing, and he's like, No, and he hands Chris like a a religious uh pamphlet or something like that. But it was just shit like that, Chris would do. Or Chris would Chris would go up to somebody at like Pilot Field at the at the baseball stadium, so some random woman, and he'd come up to her and shake her hands and like, hey Marge, how you doing? I haven't seen you since the wedding. And just to see if they would say, Oh, hi, how are you doing? You know, it was just kind of one of those types of things. Tom would do this thing called the fall, which was hilarious. He got so they used to have a professional roller hockey team in Buffalo. And Tom and I went and his ticket got called to like do like the intermission event on the on the on the court because it wasn't ice, it was a it was like a play court or whatever. So he had to like shoot like a puck through a net from like half half court or whatever. And Tom had this thing called the fall where he would just fake trip. And he would do it at the movie theaters, and he'd have like popcorn in his hand and popcorn would go all over the place. And we would go to like the cheapy theaters. I'll get into that after this, but like people would laugh their asses off. And so as he's going down the down the stairs to you know, wherever he had to go, like probably a customer support or whatever. Um we're like, do the fall, do the fall. So uh he goes on the on the floor, he takes the shot, he misses it. We booed a shit out of him, obviously. And as he's walking off, he falls, and and everyone starts laughing. Like, I mean, it wasn't like a sellout or anything like that. I mean, it was stupid roller hockey, but it was hilarious that he did it, and he got like chuckles from everybody. And I go to Tom afterwards, I'm like, what did he say? He goes, He told me don't ever do it again, because he knew it was fake. But uh, hey, that was that was Tom. Tom was hilarious. Chris was hilarious. Um, I was gonna talk about the movies. So Tom, Chris, and I would go to this, they used to have these like dollar theaters in Chictawaga. It was called the Apple Tree. And we would go every week, we went for like I want to say ten weeks in a row to see like kindergarten cop or or home alone stupid like comedy movies. I mean, they're not stupid, but like, you know, at the time, we would go to the same movie and we would try to make people laugh, like when you weren't supposed to laugh. So, like Tom would do this funny voice, and people would start laughing. He would do the fall, and then we Chris and I we would laugh at the most inappropriate times, like like when that old man is talking to McAllister in the church about how his son he doesn't talk to his son anymore, and like we would start laughing real loud. And then people who found that like were immature like us would find that hilarious. So we would get like it was just something like that. Or we and then oh yeah, and then we would go when we went to go to the movies, we wouldn't say, Can I get a ticket for kindergarten cop? We would say, Can I get a ticket for uh the policeman who goes undercover as a teacher with a bunch of little kids? And he's like, Oh, you mean kindergarten cop? Oh yeah, that's it, kindergarten cop. So whenever we would go to the movies, we would just describe the movie without actually saying the title to see how long it took for the obvious teenager across from us to go, dude, give me a fucking break. So that was that was fun. But that that basically was you know, that lots of uh tackle football, lots of street hockey. I love that. My childhood, I had a good childhood, didn't have a lot. We didn't have a pool, we didn't have any of that crap, but but you know, we had good friendship, a good, a good inner circle. And we went to we all went to the same school, which was St. Ambrose, which is still there, but if they call it something else, I'll never call it anything but St. Ambrose. And that's where I met some other people that kind of snowballed into who I know and who are my best friends today. So I met this uh guy, his name was Bill, and I think it was like fourth or fifth grade, and I had uh just you know, the way we would sit in in our classes, he sat next to me, and I had a a cutout from the newspaper of the Bills schedule, and Bill was a huge Buffalo Bills fan. So that got us to talking, and you know, as we got into sixth grade, we would play for the St. Ambrose uh baseball team, which we kicked ass. We really I didn't start until seventh or eighth grade, seventh and eighth grade, but um we had a our class was really good. Our class was really good. We won seventh, eighth grade, we won every like the playoffs and everything. But um Bill and I became really, really good friends. It revolved around sports, uh, sports and sports. He was a straight edge, and so was I. We didn't drink. I mean, granted, we were in high, you know, we weren't old enough. Well, you know what I mean. We weren't we didn't underage drink, we didn't smoke, we didn't do any of that shit. It was really, really sports. And I got to meet some of his friends from his street down couple. One was uh Savah, and Savah was this Italian kid who uh also he went to high school. My freshman year, I went to this high school Tyman, and we all would walk together, and I got to know Savah real well, and this is like '86, I think, and I got this like game, it was a weird game. It was um Dungeons and Dragons, which I know is everybody knows what it is, but at the time it was like a college thing or an older person thing. But I got this book from my aunt, and it was where you rolled dice and you went on an adventure. Well, back in the 80s, obviously Ozzy was like looked at as as uh promoting suicide and and Dungeons and Dragons. They thought it was a fantasy world and it was like worshipping the devil and shit like that. Farthest from the truth, it was just a stupid game, but you know, people are dumb, especially boomers and and and that such. Um so I went to Savah to get Savas' house, and Savah's mother was this little guinea woman in a friggin' uh house dress, mustache, and but maybe like four foot two, and she points her little bony gypsy finger at me, and she's like, I don't let Savah hang out with you no more. You play that devil game. Ah, it was hilarious. I mean, just because I invited him over once, but we would still hang out, but it was just like, uh, people, man. I think she was right off the boat, anyways. And Bill and I, we uh we we did a lot went to a lot of saber games, a lot of Bill's games. And Billy's older brother, uh Dickie, he and I, you know, he was like my almost like a surrogate big brother to me. And uh and we we did a lot of stuff together, you know, like we would go to Bill's games, and Dickie and his friend would uh give us a ride, and Bill and I would be like walking around the stadium as you're hearing the national anthem trying to scalp tickets, and back then they sucked. So you would be able to get tickets. We I remember getting tickets for like a buck or even 50 cents. Um that but that was when they were like drawing 20,000 people and shit like that. That was right before they got good, you know, before they got Bruce and Kelly and uh Cornelius and Thurman and all those guys. But uh or going to I don't even know, did kids do this today even? Like we were in seventh and eighth grade, we would take the bus to downtown, we would go to a saber game, and we had to take the bus back. And there was a bus at like 1010, and the next bus was at 11:30, and the games back then started at 7.30. So if the game went into overtime, mind you, the game back then the games ended in ties, we had to make a decision. Do we want to take the 1010 bus and leave and miss overtime, or do we want to stay and then hang out until 11:30? So most times we stayed, and then here we are, we're what 13, 12 years old, downtown Buffalo, 11 o'clock at night, on a school night, mind you. And I remember like being it's super cold on Washington, waiting for the 16, and you'd see like homeless people, or you'd see like rats, and it was really cold, and we never dressed appropriately, so we're freezing our balls off. But those were like the best times. Oh, they were so good, they're so fun. Yeah, so uh Billy and I we did that, and then not to get into this, but then my dad ended up getting cancer, and I parents couldn't afford time, and which was a public school, private school. So I ended up going to South Park, and then Bill and I kind of like lost touch for a few years there. But a kid that I ended up hanging out with who lived in a group home near my house, his name was Rocco, he and I got real tight. And I mean, he's the one who helped me meet my girlfriend who ended up being my wife, so I owe a lot to Rocco, but um yeah, Rocco had a real tough childhood and I didn't have a tough childhood. It's just, you know, we just bonded and we would go there used to be this theater in South Buffalo called the town. We would go there every week and just get into trouble. Our friend, one of our friends, was the usher there, so we would like go there to get kicked out just to pay another dollar to get back in. Oh, it was great. I used to have these little whistles and it would be real loud and you'd hide and blow the whistle and then move and then the usher he would come looking for you. He knew he knew it was us. But man, the movies that we got to see in the 80s, all the great movies from the 80s, we got to see uh together at those at that um at that theater. And then it burned down, quote unquote, under under uh very suspicious uh circumstances, and now it's like a Napa. So what talking about wasting a a childhood memory? So uh when I graduated, high well, it really wasn't even that. I guess my my dad passed, and Billy reached out, and we slowly started hanging out a little bit, just like every once in a while, because that's his family was very, very close to me. His his father and his brother and and some his other couple of his brothers and his sister, his one sister was real close. Very good. The family was very, very close. It's they very they're very close to my heart. But um, but once my dad passed, which was like at the end of my junior year, we started just like kind of staying in touch a little bit. And then when I graduated from South Park, then I started hanging out with him a lot more. And Bill was starting to change more so, you know, and and to each his own. I mean, there's people that can control certain vices and certain people that can't, right? Um, but Bill went from, like I said, being more of a straight edge, and then he started drinking a lot, like drinking vodka straight up with nothing in it. Um I don't think he smoked, but then like it just he got some jobs that made him intertwine with people that weren't I'm not editing this at all, so you guys don't have to deal with it. But um it'll uh it he he met people that were really, really bad influences in him. So he got introduced to certain substances and things like that, and yeah, if he's listening, he's listening. I really there's nothing like it's I'm not I'm not lying, so it is what it is, but um you know he kind of went off the deep end and burned many bridges. Didn't really burn a bridge with me, he just cut me off. But he definitely burned some bridges within his family, which is sad because I loved them all, I still do, but um, but if it wasn't for Bill, I wouldn't have met who are my very, very closest and best of friends today, and that really being Richie and Greg. And there's a few adult friends, and I'm not getting to know my work friends, so calm down, Mike. But um some of my adult friends um today, which is like really all connected to Bill to some degree. Um, so Dickie, his uh younger son Rich, who's probably like 10 to 12 years younger than me, um, we went to a Bills game and Ozzy was doing a concert with Rob Zombie, Mud Vane, and Trivium. And I wanted to go, but Billy was like all about you two and the goo gooodells. Greg's a big Google Dell fan, just so you know. I'm putting that out right now. Greg loves the Google Dells, so does his brother Jerry. They've got they went to all the concerts, they got the shirts, they got they got tattoos. They're kind of crazy. But needless to say, Richie and I, you know, I think uh Dickie said, you know what, uh, why don't you go to the show with Rich? So we were at the Bills game that afternoon, then we went downtown, we scalped tickets, we had really good seats. We got to see uh Rob Zombie for the first time, which was awesome. We got to see Ozzy, and he did this like Christmas, it was like a Christmas tour, and it was during those years when the it was like he was filming the first season of the Osbornes, I believe. So the Osbornes weren't even out yet. And I was always a huge Ozzy fan, huge Sabbath fan. It's like them and Maiden are my my my one-two when it comes to metal. But um, he like you know, it was the it was the actor that was going above us, but like they had like an Aussie impersonator and a Sleigo above us, throwing like tinsel shit, and show is awesome. They had Santa Claus crucified to a cross out by stage, and ironically, uh Richie and I are gonna go see and Richie is with a T, my dear. It's R-I-T-C-H-I-E for all of you who don't know how to spell Richie. That's how you spell Richie. Um, Richie and I are going to see uh Rob Zombie again this summer, which is awesome. He's coming with Marilyn Mansa now, and I'm not I'm not about that guy at all, so I'll probably still be in the parking lot having a few beverages, a few uh yeah, a few drinks, but I'm looking forward to that show, mind you. But uh Richie and I went, had a great time, and it kind of like I mean he was still younger, but it kind of like opened the door to a lot of things. And I'm gonna do a podcast in the future on some of the parties that I had at my house over the years, and some of them were absolutely epic. And I should also have a follow-up podcast with the guys, because I'm sure they have their own stories too. But I've had uh probably 20 Halloween parties and maybe like half a dozen or more St. Patrick's Day parties, and uh, they've been they were good, very good, very good South Buffalo Bashes. People talk about them. I don't remember them all, but people talk about them. But um as the years went by, Richie and I got real close and tight, and Greg and I got tighter, and Richie's best friend Dan got you know was in the mix, and Jerry, Richie, and Greg's brother and and Richie's cousin, and there's some of the shit that we used to do. Like, Jerry is a great guy. Jerry is an absolute great guy, and we would go over his house. Now he he was he's there's two Jerry's, and Jerry knows Jerry knows there's two Jerry's, there's two Jerry's, but the Jerry, like right now at uh let's see, 11 o'clock on a on a weekday is different. He's just like more professional and blah blah blah blah blah. But Jerry on a weekend during a Bills game or uh at night, you know, he he likes to party, he likes to have a good time. So after Bills games, he would call in the GR55 line and just talk gibberish and like maybe they didn't have the 10-second rule then. I'm sure if they did, it was probably because of Jerry or people like Jerry, but it was just about getting on the radio, and he would ask like the dumbest questions that would be totally irrelevant, things like that, and he would actually have us call to get us through the screeners, shit like that, and we'd just laugh. But it was good times, man. Dan, I mean this is that should actually be another podcast as well, I think. But like from the fishing trips to going out and just uh like some of the concerts that Dan and I have gone to. We didn't even go with like Richie or Greg or Jerry, it would just be like, hey Dan, you want to go out? And we'd always have like amazing time. Like I got a good story with Dan. We went to go see uh Slayer, Anthrax, I think it was God Smack and Lamb of God, maybe. I don't know. It was like four or five people in a row. So um Dan and I are there early, early, early, early. And and we're drinking, like we are shit faced. And I had the tickets on my phone, and as we're walking in, I didn't know how to get on my phone. I was so drunk. And so I finally get I get I get it on uh I get it on my phone and they let us in, which Dan has been known to have his tickets scanned at Bill's games and then immediately be thrown out of the stadium. That's how drunk Dan has been. We were there, we were we were right up there, and so we get in and we had awesome seats. We were like the 100th section, like right up front, right on the side, but like perfect seats. And so we had to go through like these layers of ushers to get to our section because you had to like show like a wristband or something was like a different color for whatever section you're in. I forgot how it was. So we had our we had our seats, and so Dan is like, I gotta go to the bathroom. Alright, let's go. And and I got paranoid. I'm like, where the hell is Dan? So I I get out of my row, my seat, and I'm drunk as fuck. I can't walk. I I can't barely like see. And I hold on, I'm holding on to like the fence. And I scream, Dan! Like I'm in a fucking I'm in an amplitheater. I'm yelling, Dan, like Dan's gonna hear me. But sure shit, he does. He finds me. Well, before he finds me, this usher comes up to me and goes, What's wrong? I go, I can't find my friend Dan. Do you know where he is? I go, Yeah, he went to make a poopy. She goes, Shut the fuck down. Like she got real pissed at me. But then I ended up coming back because she left. And then I go, Dan, and then Dan was there, and we were like up a couple sections like from where our seats were, and as everybody was coming back, we're high-fiving. We literally must have high-fived a thousand people as they were going back to their seats between like between bands. And there was like a little kid would come in, like a 10-year-old, they're like, Yeah, man, you rock! You know, we're giving them high fives, and the father's like, That's right. Oh, that was so good. That was good, that was a great night. And I don't know if Dan will ever hear this uh podcast, but that was one of the pinnacle moments. But then there was another Dan story. We went to the Mohawk, which is downtown Buffalo, it's like a punk bar. Well, I think it's a punk bar, but it's kind of whatever now. And there was an old school punk band, original CBGB band called The Dead Boys. And I called Dan up because I was going alone. I don't know anybody who likes punk but me. And I called Dan up, I'm like, Dan, why don't you uh can't you come could just come, please? Like, I I need somebody here. I went and so I went to enjoy this with somebody. So Dan shows up, like out of the blue, right? Dan shows up, and if you don't know the Mohawk, it's like one of those real small clubs. So like I'm like 10 feet away from Cheetah Chrome, who's the lead guitarist, original lead guitarist from Dead Boys, and uh he walks right by me, and I'm just he's he's like my ultimate favorite. Like, I mean, I love the Ramones and I love the Sex Pistols and the Clash and Television and you know Bad Brains and I there's you know the cramps and I love the all these bands, but like I love the Dead Boys, I really, really liked them because they just didn't give a fuck. And sure as shit, there's Cheetah Chrome, literally like walking by. So we go to the bar afterwards, and the band is there, except for Cheetah. The band's there, and Dan is so in his his interpersonal skills are so amazing. So he starts talking to them. And we're like drinking, having beers with these this band and like their their uh groupies. And the one guy had like a uh it was a mother-daughter duo, and the mom had to been like 10 years older than me, and she was smoking, and then her daughter was probably like in her mid-late 20s, and she was smoking, and I'm like, oh my god. And it just the lead singer had both of them. I'm like, oh my god, I can only imagine. But um, Dan goes, uh, where's Cheetah? to the guy. He's like, Oh, he's coming, he's gonna be around. He's like, Well, my my boy here really likes him, he's like his favorite. He's like, Oh, you should get a picture with him. So I'm like, I ain't asking him for a for a picture, you know. I'm not, I was just too nervous. And Dan goes up to him, he goes, Hey, see that guy there, man? He's like your biggest fan. Could you get a picture with him? Now, remember, this is punk. Punk don't fucking want no pictures, especially with no dudes. And I'm this big ass guy fucking sweating all over the place. And so, and I have the picture, but the the picture is me, and I'm all smiles. I got this big shit-in grin. And Cheetah's like looking not at the camera, he's looking off camera, and he's just pissed at the world. And it's my favorite picture because I wouldn't want him smiling. He shouldn't be smiling, he should be giving me the fingers, really, what he should be doing. But those two nights probably were my favorite nights with Dan. And um, yeah, who knows? Full circle come back, and I'm sure he'll be he'll he'll come back. But but now Richie and I are going to shows. Greg doesn't really care for live music. I go to a guy who's uh gonna talk about soon, Mike. He and I go to a lot of shows, but um, yeah, Richie and I we're gonna go see uh H D C this summer. We're going to see Rob Zombie and uh Zack Sabbath is coming to a little local place, so yeah, we got a good summer lined up. But um, yeah, there's a lot of stories with Richie and Greg and Dan and Jerry, and you know, maybe I'll save some of that for the uh after show with these guys and maybe have them come on and share some of their their favorite moments. But you know, I'm 53, going on 54. I've known Richie since he was in diapers basically. I remember Greg being this little kid that and he knows the story very well, but you know, he he was a big Greenway Packer fan back in the day. Like I'm talking pre-kindergarten, and we would be in the street, I'd be playing hockey with Bill in the street, and they lived across the street from Bill. And Jerry, I think, could go in the street at the time, but Greg couldn't because he was too young, and he'd be like in the end of the driveway with a stick just to try to get the ball, just happy that he was kind of hanging out with the older kids. And that that was always uh those are always good fond memories, but now they're all good to go, and we're we we click, man. We have we have a really good relationship, and uh, I can't see that ever ending. And then there was like a lot of my work friends, and my work friends kind of came after Bill, and as like I guess you could say my relationship with Richie and Greg, Dan and Jerry evolved. Um, I worked at a company called Ingramicro, and I met this guy initially, his name was Caleb. Well, Brian was the first one I met, and Brian and I, in our in the orientation, were just like it was like high school again, and it really shouldn't have been, but it was, and we're like making fun of each other, and and then we met Caleb, and it and then we met these twins, Sean and Derek, and we met Jason and Lori, and like so it was like this pack of uh and Renee, and we met this, we had this pack, this group, and so you know, if we went out or we had parties or whatever it was, we all did this together as a group, and some of the memories are just like you know, we we yeah, my wife ain't gonna want to know this, but hopefully she's not listening. But like we went, this is like 99, 2000, we went to Canada, and Brian and Caleb are all about going to like those the ballet, and so here's Brian, and he'll he could deny it if he wants, but Caleb could back me up. He's he's sitting at his table, he's got literally like a stack of ten dollar bills, and all the girls are coming by him, and he's like looking at us like yeah, they know I'm the man, and they're like, Yeah, you're the man because you got all the money, dumbass. And and and uh we got oh we went because there was a guy from Howard Stern, Hank the Angry Dwarf, was there, and I got a picture with him, which was awesome, but we were there like way too fucking long. Like, like if you wanted to go to get a picture with him and just to stay for like a half hour or whatever, that's one thing. But Caleb and and and uh and Brian wanted to stay there for like fucking hours, hours plural. And so Jason and I left and we went and got pizza somewhere like on Lundy's Lane or something in Niagara Falls, Canada, and we come back, and they're still there's still it was disgusting. So oh my god, I walk in. This is like the this was not Caleb. If you're listening, make sure that Kristen's not listening. Caleb's sitting there, he's eating a sandwich. And and Brian's next to him, he's eating a fucking sandwich, and this woman is on the table. I'm walking in, like Jason and I are walking in, like, we're like, let's get these guys out of here. Like, let's go. I don't even want to be here anymore. And Caleb is sitting there in on a in a seat with a sandwich in his hand, eating a sandwich, not my dew. Brian's next to him, and this woman is on the you know the table dance, right, right in front of him. Ugh, God, it's disgusting. Spread eagle, and she's got toilet paper on her ass. And Caleb's like looking at in her, like he's like an ecologist or something like that. And I I go up and I'm like, Are you fucking kidding me? And so Jace and I just left. We they we had two cars, and we're like, We're we're out, like you guys are gonna have to figure out how to get back. And uh, because I think we took Caleb's car. Because we took Caleb's car and Brian's car, and we just took Caleb's, we just literally took Caleb's keys and left. Um, but um oh my god, the stories that Caleb got into so much trouble. Caleb was just hilarious, but my god, he always seemed to find trouble. And then um after I left Ingram, I do I had Joe, a lot of Joe jobs after that, went back to school, uh, taught, and then uh ended up working at a paper mill, and that's where I met my best friend Mike. So, really Mike and Richie and Greg, and one more person, but I'm not gonna mention her name, are like in my inner circle. Those are like my four closest friends, and and Mike and I have known each other now for 13, 13 years now, and we are like peas and carrots. We get along very, very well. Mike is now being introduced more so to Richie and Greg and Jerry to a lesser degree. I don't think they've ever met yet. But Mike's definitely the more mature of all of us by far. And yeah, but he can still have a good time. And and I got one of my there's a lot of good memories with Mike. I mean he's he's helped us out so much, but one funny story that I can kind of end this this this uh ish this episode with, because I'm already over 40 minutes. Mike and I went to go see a Metallica. Now I uh had an amputation in my right leg, furry foot, lost some toes, and so I had like this wound vac. So it's basically like uh a sponge and a suction machine that sucks the blood out of your foot, and when there's no like blood ponding on a wound, it heals quicker, and it does. I'll testament to that. I'm a testament to that. So I have this like tube sticking out of my foot, and we're we're tailgating Metallica's at at uh at Rich Stadium at whatever you want to call it. I call it Rich Stadium, and they're with some band that is kind of like uh Richie and and Greg would like it because they're kind of like the Google dolls and Jerry, not Richie, Greg and Jerry would like them because they're like the Googledows, and then there was a band before that called Ice Nine Kills, and they do like uh horror-themed metal. But uh Mikey and I are there and and we do a couple edibles, and I am out of I'm out of my mind. I'm blitzed. I can't even stand it. I have my cane, which is a joke, and I have this tube sticking out on my foot, but I am high as fuck. I don't feel nothing. And I couldn't even put the I couldn't put our our tent away or our chairs. I mean, I was incapacitated. There was a point where I didn't think I was gonna be able to go into the stadium. Like I didn't know how I was gonna be able to walk. And Mikey took some, but Mike wasn't and I'm gonna get into the story. There's gonna be a repeat story later when I do uh Matt Stoltman's high stories. Um but Mike Mike took some, but he didn't peek yet, and I was like, I don't even know if I peeked yet, but I was already fucked up. And so we're slowly walking, and I got my cane and my thing and my foot. So you think, well, that guy is really handicapped. Well, it's not that, it's the fact that I'm so high. So we get up to the gate, and and Mike was sober enough though. So he had our tickets on my phone. I gave my code to my phone, so in case it you know blacks out, he knew he knew how to get around that. And as I'm walking up, the sheriff walks up to me and he's like, Sir, can I help you? You know, let me help you. So he thinks it's because of my foot and my cane. Because I did I broke my back, I broke a couple I broke a couple of discs, so like I have back problems too. I got I'm a I'm a fucking dead can man. That's why I call it the losing ticket. I got a lot of fucking the last six, seven years have been an episode of nightmare. Anyway. So I'm walking up and I'm like crouched over and my foot's not hurting because I'm so high, but I'm so fucked up. And Mike scans the tickets, and the sheriff's like, Do you need any help to get into your seat? I go, Oh no, I'm I'm good. In the back of my mind, I'm super paranoid because I'm like, a cop's helping me because he thinks I'm hurt, but really I'm fucked up. So we we go up this, there's like a big slope, the ramp to go to the upper deck. And as we're going up, I'm having a hard time. I'm holding on to the railing, and I got my can in one hand, I got the railing in the other, I got this this vacuum device. Oh, help. Like like on a s in a satchel over my shoulder and I'm cursing the damn ramp because it's so st for me it was so steep because I was so high. And people are laughing because they're probably drunk and high too. And I'm just like mother effing this and motherfucking this and all that. And we get to our seats and Mike goes, I'm I'm getting close. He's like, Can I get water? I'm like, Yeah, get get like tons of water, man. Cause it's I got the cot mouth and everything. So um I sit down and the sun's just like baking me, man. It's like 90 degrees, and the and the seats are like that aluminum metal, so like it just reflects that sun right back, and I'm high as fuck. And and Mike comes back, he's got like two two big waters for both of us. I'm like chugging them like like no, there's no tomorrow. And these two a mom and a uh uh mom and a daughter are sitting next to me, and they're all emoed up with the fucking black lipstick and the and the black and white pantyhose or stockings that go up mid-die and the bullshit fucking colored hair and the septums and shit like that. And they're like rocking out big time to ice nine kills, and I didn't know who they were. I'm not saying they're bad. I just I can't say anything actually. I just I don't know them. I don't like a lot of modern rock, and I don't hate it, it's just I'm I think I'm old, so I like what I like. But I'm looking at them and I'm fucked up. Now Mike's now Mike's peeking, Mike's out. And and I look at them, I'm like, you guys, they're dancing, like they're whatever they're you know, like that that electro dancing bullshit, you know, like they're dancing to their own beat. And I'm looking at them, I'm like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And I'm like, man, there's our favorite band. I go, this is your favorite band. I go, then why'd you get such shitty fucking seats? And the lady just looked at me like I was the biggest asshole, which I was, and they didn't talk to me for the rest of the show, which I'm kind of happy for, because I don't like those type of people anyway. And and then the second band came on. I forgot what they were called, I don't even care. And but they were like Led Zeppelin-ish. And um Richie probably he was on the other side of the stadium with Dan, so he probably remembers who they were. He was probably putting uh candle wax on his nipples while that guy was with his fucking sock in his pants because Richie likes guys with big dongs, just letting you know that guys. Um, but uh I then I started mellowing out. So then the sun went down, it got dark, then um Metallico is just about to come on. You hear the ecstasy in gold, and I'm fucking good. I'm like in that twilight, I'm feeling so good. I'm not hungover, I'm not, you know, just it's just the perfect feeling. And then they come on, it was an amazing show. Richie, Jerry, uh Mikey comes down, he's happy as fuck. We leave, and it was the absolute greatest day, one of the greatest days of Mike and I's friendship. And we've had a lot, we've had a bunch. So now Mikey's in our little group, and I know more memories will be had. And um, maybe this should be a part two, because there's a lot more stories I have with Richie, Greg, Dan, Jerry, Mikey. And if I really wanted to delve into deeper shit with Caleb and um Caleb for sure. See, Jason's very mature, Deshaun and Derek were mature, Lori's not mature, Caleb definitely not mature, Brian's not mature, but Caleb was oh my god, he was bad. But he made that's what made it fun. That's what made it fun. Um, but yeah, so that is uh my god, 47 minutes. So that's uh this episode of the losing ticket. I think I'm gonna name it friends, but again, don't be shocked if I do a friends part two, like I will be doing a South Buffalo Neighborhood watch. So have a great week, everybody, and I will see you next week. Bye bye.