FilteringCraig

Another Friday Five because last week was popular. Post them to your site. Post them in the comments. Just show me some love.

1. What is the greatest video game you have ever played, and why? If you aren’t a video gamer, give me some other type of game and keep it clean.

The greatest game that I have ever spent (way too much) time playing would have to be Diablo 2. That game has the perfect combination of action and dorky adventure/quest type elements. Combine that with massive online worlds of people playing at the same time, and you have a game that I might have played for over 6 months including expansion packs and online games.

2. If you could force Google, Microsoft or any other software company to build a custom application to fit a specific need, what would you have them do?

My choice would be tabbed email consolidation. I have too many email addresses. I have an old one at FilteringCraig.com (that some of you still use) but is almost all advertisements, junk mail and spam. I have what I consider to be my good email address which I change sometimes to keep the baddies away. I have a GMail account because I can. I have one at TheCompanyLineRocks.com so that I can receive band emails at a separate address. If I could have an actively responding web page like the Google maps that I could tab between my multiple email addresses on a web page and just keep them all in check, deleting, organizing etc, that would be awesome.

3. What is the greatest sporting event you have ever been to and why?

This is a tough choice because the 1995 ALCS when my brother and I were in right field at Jacob’s field heckling Jay Buhner until we went hoarse is way up there. That being said, the greatest sporting event that I have ever been to was the Ohio State vs. Michigan game from the National Championship year. I had only been to one other OSU game in my life against Indiana, and it just didn’t compare.

We were in a loge provided by Grange Insurance. I was high-fiving the CEO of the company all game long. Ohio State won the game. There were riot police and pepper spray on the field after the game and yet the fans still were able to pull the goal posts down. We walked a mile from our car and it didn’t matter. It was the most fun and excitement that I have ever had at a sporting event.

4. Please send a shout-out to the most menacing bully in your lifetime. Change the names to protect the not-so-innocent so as to avoid prosecution.

The worst bully in my lifetime was a pretty troubled kid all the way around, named Josh Gressed (I changed the last name.) I felt bad for him sometimes, but he was a total deek. He picked on me starting at a very young age and then in High School did his best to make my life hell. In fact he was a contributing factor, albeit a small one, as to why I decided to apply to a private school after my freshman year. (I ended up not going, by the way.)

I remember one time when he was about to rough me up big time during that freshman year and I used my connections to my advantage. Josh had been a total jerk all throughout lunch time one day and was throwing food at everyone at our entire table, and we were just lowly freshman and none of us all that big. (Deezo must not have been in my lunch freshman year.) Finally, my temper went crazy and I didn’t care if I got my ass kicked, so I stood up told him to “stop being an asshole.” I said it just loud enough that I possibly could have gotten a suspension point from one of the teachers.

It was a gamble. I could afford to get a suspension point for swearing and having a teacher hear me would have saved the situation from escalating to the point where he kicked my ass. Unfortunately for me, no teacher heard. So, Josh looked shocked and slightly embarrassed for 30 seconds and I sat down. Then he started giving me that menacing look like, “watch yourself as you walk back from lunch.”

So, lunch ends and I am walking back to my classroom with some friends and all of a sudden I feel a huge pain in the back of my neck. Josh is about 4 inches taller than I am and he has a vice-like grip on the back of my neck with his huge ham hands. I figure I am just about screwed, but I can’t possibly beg for mercy or anything like that, so I throw out another lifeline. This is how I used my connections.

I was a very good soccer player back in the day. As a freshman, I was able to make the varsity team, so I knew lots and lots of seniors, most of which were pretty powerful socially, if not physically. It just so happened that a senior friend who happened to be on the team and who also happened to be 6 foot 2 and over 200 pounds was walking behind me that day. Josh was a sophomore, so even the bully had to cower in some scenarios.

Back to the story. Josh had his hand on the back of my neck squeezing and figuring out what he was going to do next. With every bit of my strength, I exploded out of the hold, pushed him in the chest (he only went back about a couple feet) and I faced him and yelled “What the fuck!!?!?!” Again, I was hoping maybe a teacher would hear me well enough to pull me aside to give me a suspension point or something, but at the same time that was better than the guaranteed ass-kicking I was going to receive.

Luckily, no teacher heard me, but my friend from the soccer team did and walked right up to Josh, put an oppressive arm around him and said, “Hey, do you have a problem?” And that was it.

I stood up to the bully (probably stupidly), and with a little help from my friends, everything worked out. That’s not to say he didn’t pick on me other days, but I never did get my butt kicked by the bully.

5. What is your NFL lock of the week? Meaning, which game do you think you can guarantee a winner? Give me that winner. Tell me why.

While it is tempting to pick Arizona at Dallas, I am going to have to take the hated Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night with the Baltimore Ravens coming to town. The Steelers will win this game and it will also be the last game where Jamal Lewis gets to start. It will be Chester Taylor’s backfield after Monday night, for the rest of the season.

George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.

Takei told The Associated Press on Thursday that his new onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in “Equus,” helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality.

Takei described the character as a “very contained but turbulently frustrated man.” The play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that Frontiers magazine featured a story on Takei’s coming out.

First of all, good for him. I definitely support anyone’s right to love anyone they want to love without persecution from anyone. Second of all, NO SHIT, George. Not that you can always judge a book by its cover, but this book had a picture window for a cover. We could all see it. Anyone who heard clips of Takei speaking on the Howard Stern Show could have guessed it.

Finally, I will give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, but in the CNN article it mentioned how his new “onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in “Equus,” helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality.” Let’s all hope that he didn’t use coming out as a publicity tool to keep a fading semi-celebrity star shining for a couple more years.

Maybe ticket sales were falling off for the next Star Trek cruise?

With the Chicago White Sox sitting as the reigning World Series champs, I couldn’t help but be depressed by the thoughts that started creeping into my brain. The AL Central hasn’t had a World Series champ in a very long time. In fact, after checking to be sure, you have to go back to 1991 when the Minnesota Twins beat the Braves, to find another AL Central World Series Champ.

Why?

Because the most dominant team of the AL Central in the 90’s, the Cleveland Indians, couldn’t put themselves and this city’s baseball fans over the top. Sandwiched in between Chicago’s championship this year and Minnesota’s championship in 1991 are two World Series defeats for the Tribe in 1995 and 1997.

And you know what? I am sick and tired of hearing about how teams haven’t won since 1917. I don’t care that it has been since 1917, or 1918, or whatever. All I care about is that there have been no championships in the City of Cleveland for any sports team this side of indoor soccer since 1985 when I was 6 years old and started watching Cleveland Sports.

And quite honestly, that is all I should care about. The Indians haven’t won since 1948. That doesn’t mean I have had 57 years of suffering. I have had 26 years of non-championship life in Cleveland, so at the most that means 20 years of suffering because I didn’t watch sports before I could comprehend them at the age of 6. And neither did you.

If you are my age or younger, you can’t take on the cursed feeling of twenty-seven generations of sports fans. I used to get this all the time when I lived in Boston. Yankees fans chanting 1918 at Red Sox fans and Red Sox fans talking about their team and how they “deserve” something after 86 years of pain.

I finally just started deriding people in bars.

Me: “What year were you born?”

Kid: “1979″

Me: “Yeah. Me too. Have the Red Sox won a world series since you were born?”

Kid: “No. And that’s what I’m tryin to….”

Me: “Quiet. Have the Indians won a World Series since we were born?”

Kid: “No.”

Me: “So how is it any different that your team hasn’t won since 1918 and mine hasn’t won since 1948 if we were both born in 1979? It sure sounds like the same experience to me. Two guys, same age, same number of championships between them. Oh wait, didn’t you have a guy named Larry Bird who won some championships for the Celtics? Yeah, I know it isn’t baseball, but I would take it. So, maybe you should just sit there and feel lucky.”

At this point, the kid sees that seething look in my eye that says I might pop an aneurism and spill blood in his beer, so he pretends to watch the television.

So, congrats to the White Sox on their victory. Congrats to all the White Sox fans who are at least 88 years old on waiting one hell of a long lifetime to win. YOU have earned it.

And I will be sitting here counting the years. Hopefully I don’t have to wait until the year 2067.

Goodbye, Howard Stern. Hello, David Lee Roth. And Adam Carolla. And CNN Radio News. And Jack-FM. And �

Infinity Broadcasting Corp., finally revealing its plans to replace the self-proclaimed “King of All Media,” announced a new morning drive time lineup Tuesday of assorted hosts for its 27 soon-to-be former Stern stations. Rather than turning to a single replacement, Infinity offered a variety of names for different markets.

The end is near for radio, folks. This isn’t the first shot, nor will it be the last, but radio as we know it is dying at an accelerating rate.

Before you peg me as just another loud-mouthed Howard Stern fan who believes every bit of his hype, I will head you off at the pass. I am a former Howard Stern fan. I got bored with him. Now I am an XM Satellite Radio fan. I have seen the other side of the mountain and this desolate valley that terrestrial radio has slowly dropped itself into, is barren, cold and boring.

On the other side there is uncensored talking, a la Howard Stern at Sirius and Opie and Anthony at XM. There is more music, including channels for all the decades as well as genre-based stations. They have news channels. They have sports packages for the NFL, MLB and the NHL so you can listen to your favorite sports teams no matter where you live around the United States. They even have traffic stations for most major metropolitan areas.

Meanwhile, all terrestrial radio can do is continue to play tons of commercials, continue to automate their formats (JACK FM Anyone?) and pretend that anyone cares about High Definition Radio. They are walking themselves right off the plank to a shark-infested sea of media irrelevancy. It is true that satellite radio costs money, but so does our cable and satellite television. I am sure there were many skeptics who thought nobody was going to pay to watch television. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The same thing will happen with radio, only it will be worse. Companies like Infinity Broadcasting aren’t going to survive like NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX did. They were included on your satellite and cable TV packages, but none of the satellite radio companies are looking to sign up Infinity terrestrial radio stations for their content. They don’t need them. They are too busy stealing people like Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony and a whole host of terrestrial radio personality castoffs that love music and program channels better than some machine ever could.

As for terrestrial radio’s last ditch effort at competing on quality with hi-def, they are missing the boat. The record industry just finished learning this lesson. While they were arguing over the format for future music and whether it should be one of two super high quality standards like SACD or DVD Audio, the consumers were busy sacrificing the quality throughout their entire media collections to take the convenience route and convert their collections to MP3’s.

In the case of hi-def radio, the level of quality will never be enough to outweigh the convenience of listening to music without commercials and without those impossibly infinitesimal playlists. Throw a little uncensored, unregulated talk radio on top of it all and you have a clear view of the death of radio as we know it.

At least that is what I think. Then again, maybe this little rant will sound a lot like the people who were pimping the Mini-disc, Betamax and Laserdisc technologies of yesteryear.

Well, apparently my friend and his new wife are still ok in Cancun and attempting to get home after surviving the storm on what should prove to be a memorable vacation.

I can’t wait to hear the story from this one and I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go through the whole thing. I also begin to wonder how I would have reacted to the situation. Having my hotel destroyed. Being evacuated with no possessions to the second story of a Mexican school house 15 miles inland. Not being able to do anything for two or three days.

I don’t think the results would be very good.

Hopefully I never find out, either.

This weekend I watched a few movies. As I continue to check out movies, it continues to be more and more directly related to my expectations going into it which determines whether I like it or not after it is over.

I had high expectations for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but overall, I wasn’t taken with anything in it. I wasn’t taken with the characters. I wasn’t taken with the story. I thought the president of the galaxy took too many pages from Michael Keaton in Beatlejuice. Overall, just didn’t dig this flick as much as I was hoping I would.

Next on the list is the really low expectation movie that I didn’t pick out. A Lot Like Love had a strike against it before we even got it home because Ashton Kutcher is in it. I love That 70’s Show and I can even watch Punk’d a little bit on TV, but I think Ashton Kutcher stinks in the movies. I hated Dude, Where’s My Car?

I love alliteration and this movie title has a lot of it. Is it possible that Ashton Kutcher could be awful enough in this movie to ruin alliteration?

Thankfully, not today.

The movie was actually pretty decent for a romantic comedy. Amanda Peet is a personal favorite of mine. I don’t know why exactly, but I loved her in The Whole Nine Yards, and Igby Goes Down. Maybe it was because she was naked in both of those flicks.

Alright, maybe that has something to do with it.

Anyway, coming up this week, I should be watching The Amityville Horror, The Astronaut’s Wife, and Closer.

Leo Roth, of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, reports Buffalo Bills RB Willis McGahee claimed he was the best running back in the NFL during a conference call this week. McGahee said, “I’m the best back (in the NFL). Case closed.” He also addressed the Oakland Raiders defense, saying, “I’m not worried what they’re going to do. They better worry about what I’m going to do.”

Um, yeah… Willis?

I think these guys might have something to say about your statement.

LaDainian Tomlinson
Edgerrin James
Corey Dillon
Shaun Alexander
Priest Holmes
Jamal Lewis

among others…

By the way, thanks for the Ohio State championship a couple years ago. Without that, being a sports fan in the state of Ohio might be impossible.

By the way, have you checked out Deezo and FilteringCraig’s Cleveland Sports Curse site? We are just a bunch of homer Clevelanders talking Cleveland sports.

Last night I got a text message on my phone that said:

“just talked 2 beck n mike. they were evacuated 2 a school house inland. they r ok.”

And even after seeing that pop up on my phone, I laughed to myself a little bit thinking that it was just some pre-storm bullshit hype and that their honeymoon in Cancun probably just got rained on a bit. Then I started thinking about it and broke out the map.

The furrowed brow formed on my face.

Then I decided to check out some articles.

With 225 kph winds, the storm shattered windows and downed trees that crushed cars. Pay phones jutted from floodwaters in the famed hotel zone in Cancun, which is a narrow strip of land between the sea and a brackish lagoon that the waves have begun to breach.

“The water is crossing over from the sea into the lagoon,” said Gonzalez Cantu, who called the destruction “tremendous.”

Now my mild concern is turning to deep concern.

I call the friend for more details and am in amazement at just how oblivious I have been about this last storm.

I get my friend on the phone and she tells me some scary stuff.

Our friends have been evacuated to a school house about 15 miles inland from Cancun.

Their hotel room window caved in.

They have been given a pillow and a blanket.

They had one bag with them during evacuation but that got taken for some reason.

They somehow managed to get one of their cell phones through and it is working, miraculously.

They are very scared and feel lucky to be alive.

And to think I didn’t even think enough to be worried. I am now just hoping they can find a way home sooner rather than later. Cancun is way up on that peninsula geographically it might be pretty hard to get anywhere by land, and who knows what shape the airport is in.

We will see. I am thinking about them a lot now.

Here’s hoping…