Buffa's Buffet: 5 things on my mind

Let's defeat the Monday blues by discussing semi-important stuff.

I often say when driving around St. Louis that it will be a wonderful city when they are done building it, a saying that doesn’t lose steam due to the endless shitty pavement located around town. City, county, midtown, or wherever you place the pin; your car is up against it.

For example, there’s a city intersection that I commute through just about every weekday. Olive and Tucker Boulevard is the location. It sits about three streets away from Market Street, which is one of the main wavelengths of action downtown. Right after you drive over Tucker, continuing east on Olive Street, a large crater waits for your car. You can’t avoid this hole without running into the lane next to you. Screwed and helpless to your shocks being banged around.

Here’s the unfunny part: they were working on this area for four weeks before the cones and tape was rolled up and the area was opened back up. So, nothing or little was fixed. Few to zero cars were saved by this road work. It’d be different if I drove over it this week, and my car sung back to me. It did not. So it goes in St. Louis.

Are your city streets a mess? Probably. Does good television help? I think so.

“Yellowstone” is enjoying a nice season. Nice as in it’s rolling along well and the stakes are rising for the characters, but there’s still a good amount of season left. Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, and Cole Hauser are terrific as the main leads, and the supporting cast behind them gets better each season. Among them, Gil Birmingham and Luke Grimes are standouts.

Every season paints a conflict around the Dutton Ranch, an operation that doesn’t mind cowboying up the rules and laws of the game in order to keep their land. Someone threatens to take it, and each season they get a little better at it.

It’s a blast seeing Costner lean into a role so natural for his talent; the gruff voice, unforced physicality, and presence in the role. But Hauser and Reilly are the ones who struck gold here. The former playing Rip Wheeler, the #2 to Costner’s Dutton on the ranch, and Reilly playing Beth, the hot-tempered yet whip smart daughter. Each actor was halfway known before the show started, but are not well-known due to the writing and craftsmanship of co-creator and main writer, Taylor Sheridan.

Is it “Sopranos” on a Montana ranch? Yes, certain aspects strike that balance. But with the gorgeous landscapes and layered action/morals in the show’s storytelling, “Yellowstone” stepped out as its own thing years ago. Tons of writers and actors have driven over the terrain of gangsters wreaking havoc in a city like New Jersey or New York, but guns and fists on a ranch is another ballgame for viewers and the creators.

Sheridan makes it authentic and lived-in, and the actors take over from there. A new episode premieres every Sunday night. It’s currently in its fifth season.

HUG your moms, friends. Don’t wait to call, text, message, reach out, or say something sweet to the soul who brought you into this crazy world. Hearing that a sports colleague/friend in Cam Janssen lost his mother over the weekend breaks my heart. What’s a boy to do in this world without their mom? How do you move on from that? There’s no conceivable method or ready strategy for it.

Life doesn’t ask you if your life is in order before wrecking it all together. It’s impossible to be ready for that, so the best we can do is make sure those who need to know how we feel about them carry little doubt. It’s something that racks my brain more often as I get older. Bad thoughts fly into the head whenever they deem it necessary to mess with our subconscious, like a bad thought terrorist.

I see my mom weekly and regularly. Same with my dad. Nothing that’s going to happen can be stopped, but we can do a few things to make the aftermath better.

Moving to a non-heavy topic. What about Blues talk? The hockey team that equally excites and frustrates is stuck in a nasty tailspin that has their record sitting at 12-15-1 after their first overtime loss Sunday afternoon. The Colorado Avalanche escaped with a 2-1 victory, snatching victory from the claws of St. Louis with a very late third period goal to tie the game before taking the contest in OT.

After winning their seventh game in a row on Nov. 21, the Blues have lost eight of ten games. They’ve been outscored 49-31, which is a horrific performance from the defense and less than stellar from the offense. Averaging three goals a game isn’t going to help a St. Louis team with so many holes in their defense.

It’s getting to the point where the head coach looks stressed and out of answers at the microphone after games. Craig Berube can’t invent new ways to say his team is playing like shit, and he can’t sugarcoat the negative effects of this losing streak. Winning a game once every two weeks doesn’t lift morale that far off the ground.

What’s next? Internal improvement. There’s two-plus months before the trade deadline gets here, and Doug Armstrong isn’t shooting from the hip in trying to rehab this mess. String wins together? Of course. Play a solid 40 minutes out of 60 instead of 25-30. Find a way to clean up the front of the net, which is where a lot of goals are happening.

They play at home tonight, and will take their show on the road for two games later this week. My guess is they lose two of three, and continue to search for answers. If I am wrong about this, tell me how. This team looks rougher than the 2018-19 team ever did. There isn’t a hero in sight for the Blues.

What else is on my mind?

~The Monday blues really do stink, much more than the St. Louis Blues.

~All I can think about right now is that first puff and digestion of cannabis right after five o’clock in the evening, signaling that the day job has come to an end. That’s my dream mode. The evening ahead, right next to the highway, is the simplest of treasures. Some people love their job so much this doesn’t matter. I’m not there yet.

~Cannabis strain of choice this past week: Kosher Kush, Guava Cooler, Banana Macaroon, and Guamba Juice X Wilson. My goal each week is to find the cheapest yet most potent strain to pursue, and collect a few favorites along the way. There’s a sweet spot to purchasing weed, and the first step is understanding it’s not THC % or terpenes, or whether it’s indica or sativa. The truth is ALL of those things play into how it makes you feel.

Maybe there’ll be more weekly cannabis discussion on the Ramble. Maybe. Until next time, behave yourself and be kind--unless the person is being a dick. Once that occurs, you slip into the Alec Baldwin mode and tell them the second place holder for being an asshole gets a brand new set of steak knives.

Also, no thanks tonight on Avatar 2. Spend nine hours at work, and then go to a three and a half hour movie? NOPE.