Jack Kukoda

What’s up Kukoda-ites? By the way, that’s what I’ve taken to calling the people who read this site: Kukoda-ites. I also considered Kukodians, Kukodaroos, and Kukodans-really, with a beautiful, easy-to-pronounce name like Kukoda, you can’t go wrong. Anyway, if you want your complimentary(with payment of $19.95) Kukoda.com T-shirt that tells the world you’re a Kukoda-ite, just send me a letter with your t-shirt size, a check for $19.95, and shipping and handling charges of, oh, let’s say 10 bucks. That should cover it. In return, you’ll get a beautiful half cotton/half polyester shirt with my picture on it. I’ll even autograph it with an airbrush for added classiness.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, let me tell you about my trip to Buffalo. As usual, I forgot to bring my camera, so I’ll have to tell this story using…wait for it…Google Images! Hurray! Take it away, other people’s (possibly copyrighted) photos!

I got into Buffalo on Friday afternoon. I usually fly JetBlue, but they’re getting too expensive, so I had to fly Comair. Where have I heard of Comair before? It sounds so familiar. Oh right, that’s the airline that crashed in Kentucky after their pilots took off from the wrong runway. Sweet! I came to that realization after I had boarded the plane though. I kind of started to freak out, thinking the plane would try to take off from the sidewalk or something, but I figured everything would be okay and just wanted the plane to get into the air as soon as possible so I could relax. We ended up spending a good two hours on the runway. I’m not sure why. The pilot explained something but I was too busy crying with my sweater pulled up over my head to hear what he was saying.

The plane took off eventually and I arrived in Buffalo in the afternoon. I had a slight cold so I slept for most of the day. Yeah! Sleep! It was awesome. Later on, I went for a jog around Delaware Park, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, thank you very much! Delaware Park also encompasses the Buffalo Zoo. So after I finished running, I went into the zoo and wrestled a couple polar bears to finish up my workout. Then I hunted the zookeeper as a cooldown. Good workout.

Friday night I stayed in because I had a cold. Also, I only have about 3 friends left in Buffalo, and none of them wanted to hang out with me. Whatever. I’ve got at least twice that many friends here in New York, so I’m not really sweating it or anything. Right, friends? High five! High five ’cause you know I’m so right? Hello? Car Ramrod? Nobody, huh? Aw, go to hell.

Saturday I went shopping…with my mom!!! Whoo-hoo! We went to Target to get some stuff for my new nephew(much more on him later) and I picked up a couple of frying pans. How’s that for excitement?! Nothing cooler than shopping at Target with your mom on a Saturday for kitchen supplies! Oh, I also bought some pants…at Target!! Good Lord, it’s amazing that I’m not raped by supermodels when I walk down the street. That’s how amazingly cool and sexy I am.

Saturday night, I went out with some friends. I went over to my friend Madeline’s apartment. Madeline is a big fancy lawyer and lives in a very nice apartment in this cool old house. Oh man, it was a party. It was me, Madeline, our friend Kelly, and…hmm, that’s it. There were three of us there and about four cases of beer. Now that’s a goddamn party. Whatever, we’re a super exclusive bunch. There were like 100 people begging to get in, but we were all, “No way. We’re a super exclusive bunch. You go to hell.” Eventually, the three of us headed to a bar in downtown Buffalo called…wait for it…Soho! And man, it’s just like SoHo in New York City. Except Buffalo’s Soho has neon signs advertising pina coladas and margaritas. And there are a lot of guys with gold chains and gelled hair. And Buffalo’s Soho bar was playing a Bills pregame show on all their TV’s on a Saturday night. Other than that, same exact thing.

I woke up on Sunday after a good three hours of sleep and headed out to the Bills game. It was a beautiful day; sunny, no wind. I had to meet a friend of mine to get a ticket to the game. No problem, right? I’ll call him, find out where he’s tailgating, and get my ticket. Not even close. It took me a good 40 minutes to find my friend, even though he was giving me explicit directions over the phone the whole time. If I ever get drafted into the army, I’m not going to pretend I’m gay or anything to get out of it. I’ll just say, “Hand me a map and tell me to go somewhere.” Then I’ll inevitably get lost just trying to find the bathroom. Sweet Christ, I am terrible at following directions or reading a map or just trying to navigate somewhere in general. Really, really bad.

After wandering the parking lot for close to an hour, I found my friends. We drank some beers, I tried to win a t-shirt by throwing a football through a net, drank some more beers, cursed the football throwing game for being rigged, and finally went into the game. The game was awesome for the first five minutes. The Bills looked unstoppable. Then they looked kind of shitty, and I became irascible. Oh, and I had forgotten the amount of white trash that can be found at a Bills game. I don’t know if it’s because I hadn’t been to one in a couple years or because I was sitting in the highest section of the stadium where the tickets are cheaper, but some of the fans around me looked like homeless people. Honest-to-goodness hobos. Sure they were wearing Bills gear, but it was all stuff from the late 80’s/early 90’s when the Bills had a different color scheme, so you couldn’t tell if they had bought it back then or if it had been donated to the homeless shelter they lived at.

Well, that’s about it for my Buffalo trip. I’m going to see my nephew at the end of the week and I’ve got a ton of pictures of him already that I can post. I think I’ll do that tomorrow. Word up. Go Bills.