Buffa’s Buffet: 5 things on my mind

Ray Liotta was a real life hulk.

Once upon a time, Michael Stipe wrote a song called “Everybody Hurts,” and he’s not wrong. I’ll be writing a new song called “Everything Hurts,” and getting Michael to sing it.

I can imagine the video. Me in the truck delivering plumbing supplies, and Michael in the seat next to me, singing like only the lead singer of REM could. The rain starts to fall, a cast iron tub has to be two wheeled off the truck, and Stripe really gets into it.

Everything does hurt… after 40 I think. There’s no bouncing back from injuries or avoiding the dread that comes with every cut and scratch. There’s a point in time where people hurt themselves without even knowing it, and I’ve reached it.

The back tightened today as I looked down at paper work. We have entered the thunder dome of middle age. Happy to be here yet will complain, signed the guy who now owns a scar on the side of his bald head from a collision with a four-inch PVC pipe.

~The makers of John Wick certainly won’t complain. This week, less than three weeks after releasing, the modestly budgeted sequel ($90 million these days is just that) will pass the overall worldwide gross of the third film, which finished with over $300 million.

The Keanu Reeves-led Chapter Four also owns the best score on Metacritic, which grades films on a scale of 1-100. Mr. Wick, round four currently sits at a crisp 78/100. Even Best Picture nominees don’t finish in that grade range. Maybe the public wants true entertainment.

That’s what Chapter 4 does and then some. Along with supplying fans of the franchise with the patented action choreography, it continues to enhance the world and enlarge the cast, giving Reeves plenty of partners to bleed and dance with. It’s nearly three hours, but without a minute wasted. Seeing that gross big dollars does garner my interest.

It’s like seeing the Apple fritter sell out at Donut Drive-in. That’s my favorite donut, so I want to see a large and dense pastry stick around. Success sure helps with longevity. I don’t need more Wick movies, but I would like more donuts. Thank you. Let’s move on.

~In a recent conversation on Facebook with one of my oldest friends in Paul Kuthe, we debated the ideas behind trying to collect more subscribers for the newsletter here. As in trying to sell myself and content better than I am currently doing. What started out as a temperamental mood post about the difficulty in getting friends to hand over their email turned into an educated discussion.

I’ll be honest and admit promoting myself isn’t one of my strong suits. One must balance their work and ego on a high wire while displaying their need for other’s involvement. How do you break down your work without sounding proud of it, and also connect enough to not make the whole idea of writing and reading seem like a transaction.

Paul suggested making more apparent the problem I am solving for potential subscribers, and I’m at a loss for ideas honestly-outside of what I’ve already attempted in promotions. I have broken down in more ways than one the details of my content on social media and other avenues, but those are so clogged and misdirected easily.

It’s sad that people will offer up their email to stores and sellers of all kinds that they won’t even use in the end, but not emails from a writer they like. They see it as a transaction instead of a perspective one can trust. The only problem I do solve is clearing the ideas and ruminations out of my brain. That’s what I’m doing here, and augmenting that for the sake of $15-20 extra dollars per month isn’t a time consumption I’m leaning on.

To sum all of this up, tell a friend about me or change human nature in a way that allows them to give up an email to someone they’ve read for years. Paul is well researched and knows what he’s talking about, but this guy is tired of trying to sell his writing, or make it more accessible.

No thanks. Also, no thanks on the Loop Trolley.

~Talk about unnecessary and a gigantic waste of money, and you don’t have to look further than the time capsule sucking up pavement on Delmar Boulevard. University City, now the cloak and dagger of Washington University, is already a tightly packed area with little wiggle room for pedestrians and drivers. Lanes shift and come off slim, and walk/stop walking signs are mere suggestions.

The street is split between rich college kids feeling entitled and the hipster crowd merging with the business district. Enter the trolley. Oh, how lovely it must be to step on a piece of 1915. Soak it in, sip the coffee, and take a ride down… give me a break.

Sorry, Joe Edwards. This is about as good of an idea as placing four traffic lights in a quarter mile stretch southbound down Skinker Boulevard. Green light, red light, green light, insanity reached. The Loop Trolley wades down Delmar, clogging traffic and making people run even more red lights. It’s useless.

It’s hit more cars than Ben Affleck trying to parallel park. It’s broken down, died, come back, almost died again, and risen from the dead so many times that jelly beans start to hide every time this thing rides. What’s the point? Should we bring back hot air balloons next?!

Maybe I can deliver plumbing supplies next week in a stagecoach that Home Depot, IKEA, and Bass Pro Shop collaborated on. Let’s try that out instead of paying teachers, cops, and making road construction more efficient. Maybe Edwards can push more money into the rehabbing of Manchester Road between Hanley and Berry Road. That street will be beautiful when they’re done building it.

Please, with sugar and Christina Hendricks’ gorgeous boobs on top, ditch the Loop Trolley.

~Ray Liotta could single handedly take out the trolley. The late actor was well known for his intensity on screen, but we are slowly finding out about his knack for intimidation. While Henry Hill may have been frightened by Joe Pesci’s Tommy in Goodfellas, Liotta would have been the monster in Pesci’s closet in real life.

Just ask Tom Cruise. According to Joe Carnahan, it was Liotta’s blunt ferocity that helped get Narc the wider distribution and release. During dinner, Ray just flat out asked Cruise if he was going to make the deal and distribute Carnahan’s movie. Tom complied. He wasn’t the only movie star to bend to Liotta’s will.

Since his death, actors and filmmakers have been telling stories about Ray, and Derek Cianfrance spun a great one. The writer/director of The Place Beyond the Pines-which included Liotta and a guy named Bradley Cooper in its cast-spoke about a scene in which Ray’s dirty cop in the film follows Cooper’s younger and ambitiously noble officer into the woods.

Once there, Liotta’s rogue badge lays into Cooper’s youthful arrogance about taking money in a recent bust. In between takes, Cianfrance sensed Bradley needed a push and wanted Liotta to be more menacing in the scene, so he asked the vet to toss him a pep talk. Ray didn’t beat around the bush.

At the time, Cooper was a rising star, no longer the bro who beat up on Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers. The Hangover 2 had come out recently and did very well, despite negative reviews. Liotta used that as firepower, calling out the younger actor’s privilege on this set.

“You’re the luckiest guy on this (set). I watched ‘The Hangover 2’ on a plane, and walked out.”

I could be leaving a word or two out, but that’s what Liotta said to Cooper. Soon after, the scene was completed and the director got what he wanted out of a young Coop. Apparently, sometimes you just need a little unfiltered Liotta to pull a good performance out.

All I can say is I love Liotta even more after hearing that story.

~The St. Louis Blues finished their 2022-23 season in a quiet, ho-hum fashion this week. A lack of playoff activity for a season is one thing, but the lack of discussion and fever pitch around this team in this city is something else the team will have to work on. You didn’t hear much about the Blues after their season’s fate was decided at the trade deadline.

Betting the future of their defense on Colton Parayko and Torey Krug was a mistake that snowballed through the team this year, but the coaching deserves plenty of blame for a horrific special teams performance that hindered this team often. I won’t waste time in recapping a season I didn’t watch enough of in order to provide a trustworthy analysis. Look at the stats, calendar, and the rest of the league.

I will say that the attention span for sports in this city has widened over the past year. It’s not just a baseball and hockey town anymore; football and soccer are here too. The boom in this city for a sports appetite is more apparent than ever, so every team must do what they have to in order to stay in the huddle.

Doug Armstrong said in his post-regular season presser that he doesn’t see a long-term, aka eight to nine year, rebuild for this team. He did say he wouldn’t be surprised if the team made the playoffs next season and did damage, but that only tells me that fans must have patience with this team.

Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Brayden Schenn, Jordan Binnington, Justin Faulk, and Brandon Saad are going to be Blues for an extended time. But so are Parayko and Torey Krug, so strap in for a doozy.

We live in a what-did-you-do-for-me-yesterday kind of world, and that extends to sports and breeds from a short attention span crowd. The Blues can’t afford a long rebuild, not if they want to remain a part of the discussion here. Four sports exist again here in a primetime capacity. Mock the Battlehawks for being an XFL team, but sports enjoyment isn’t always relegated to a certain professional level.

Giving something back to fans is vital. I hope this enlarged buffet gave you some perspective or a sense of enjoyment. I emptied the tank.

~Oh, one more thing. A life hack if you will. For those tired of having to tip at Starbucks, here’s a way out of the uncomfortable situation: use cash. Pay the old fashioned way, and you avoid the stare-down as you tap the screen for tip. While I do value tipping, it’s not something I equate to a Starbucks employee.

Is the barista getting the tip? Are they pooling tips? What are they doing above and beyond to get a tip on a cup of coffee and warmed up bagel? Come on. Use cash, friends.