FilteringCraig

Casey Coleman was one of the last of the sportscasters in Cleveland who could really help tie this city back to the glory days of the Browns in the 80’s. He was on the front lines as they left town for Baltimore. He was well-respected as a sports guy so much in Cleveland that he made his way to one of the biggest radio morning shows in the city despite the fact that it wasn’t about sports. Coleman became the voice of the Browns after this city lost another favorite voice, Nev Chandler, to cancer in 1994.

Casey Coleman died this morning after fighting pancreatic cancer for a year. He was 55.

I will always be able to hear Casey Coleman’s voice in my head as a voice of the Browns. And as the Browns seemingly hit rock bottom for the Nth time since returning in 1999 yesterday against the Bengals, they also lose a living legend, in Coleman.

If you want to get to know exactly who Casey Coleman was, you can read about a conversation he had with Akron Beacon Journal writer Terry Pluto, upon finding out that the doctors gave him six months to live.

At the time, this story was heartwarming. Today it reads like a eulogy.

This is why I love Amazon.com. They are always looking to go that extra mile to save me money. In this case, they are saving me $723,407.01 off of the regular price of $723,420.00

At this rate, I can’t afford NOT to shop at Amazon.

It is one thing to have a home NFL team that makes you want to wear a paper bag over your head. That has happened to any number of teams throughout NFL history. The Arizona Cardinals certainly can qualify as the paper shopping bag type of team. The Bengals also qualified before the last few seasons before they got Marvin Lewis coaching and Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson playing. You see, the Cleveland Browns are different because you have to ask their fans whether they want paper or plastic.

There is something of a perfect storm hanging over Cleveland since the team returned in 1999. They were an expansion team with less advantages than either Jacksonville or Carolina because the NFL changed their policies following the “premature” successes of those teams. Combine that with the two inept management regimes provided by Carmen Policy/Dwight Clark first, and Butch Davis second. Those regimes led to the drafting, departure and decline of players like Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, Gerard Warren, Jeff Faine and the much forgotten Jeremiah Pharms.

Pharms already had his draft day. It came in 2001, when the Cleveland Browns selected him in the fifth round. He never played a down.

Instead, he spent 27 months at Shelton Corrections Center after entering an Alford plea on a robbery charge — not admitting guilt, but acknowledging there was sufficient evidence for a conviction.

And even now, there is more dysfunction than the law should allow. There was a front-office pissing match between the football guy (Phil Savage) and the marketing guy (John Collins) which resulted in Collins not working for the Browns any more. Then there were problems with offensive coordinator Maurice Carthon that led to Trent Dilfer, the only experienced backup QB on the team, being shipped to San Francisco before Carthon wrote his own ticket out of town with some horrendous looking offensive schemes in the first half of this season.

And yet, this town continues to support the Browns. I think everyone feels like this team has improved over last season, and yet, what does that do for Cleveland Browns fans? They get to feel like they are going to lose every single game of every single season. Ask any Browns fan who watched yesterday’s Browns/Steelers game if they thought the Browns would win. Even though the team was leading for over three quarters of football, it was never a surprise that Pittsburgh was in a position to win at the end of the fourth quarter. It was even less of a surprise that Ben Roethlisberger could play one of the worst games of his career and still shovel a three yard pass to Willie Parker to put the winning touchdown on the board with 32 seconds remaining.

And yes, it is debatable which loss hurts more; the one at the last minute with 32 seconds remaining in the game or the 41-point demolition that occurred on Christmas Eve last year. Both games scream of ineptitude.

The real problem for Browns fans is who to blame. And anyone who accuses Browns fans of complaining without justification is plain ignorant. There are so many people who need to have the finger pointed in their direction and all justifiably so.

• Art Modell for moving a team and then winning a Superbowl in Baltimore

• former Cleveland Mayor Michael White for being corrupt (allegedly) and screwing up enough that Modell left
• Paul Tagliabue for allowing a franchise with such great tradition, history and one of the most loyal fan bases to leave Cleveland
• Paul Tagliabue again for changing the expansion rules after Jacksonville and Carolina were allowed to come into the league and compete
• Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark for putting the team behind the eight ball at the start with Tim Couch and Courtney Brown
• Butch Davis for messing up drafts and causing an entire team of players to hate him for being secretive, underhanded and frankly just plain shady
• John Collins for trying a power play in the Browns front office that would have resulted in Phil Savage leaving the team
• Romeo Crennel for sticking by his friend Maurice Carthon to the detriment of the team
• the Lerner family for not getting this thing under control sooner

It is one thing to just have bad luck (and the Browns have had plenty) but it is quite another to have bad luck combined with all these mistakes. Browns fans don’t deserve it. I don’t come from the school of thought that any team deserves championships or playoff success, but I think Browns fans deserve to have a look at a 500 or better season every now and then.

Until then, there is only one question.

Paper or plastic?

Right now I am leaning toward plastic.

This question was asked by ESPN.com about the Ohio State matchup against Michigan.

11) Which of these role players will have the greatest impact on the game?

• 32.6% WR Adrian Arrington, Michigan

• 22.4% RB Chris Wells, Ohio State
• 19.3% WR Brian Robiskie, Ohio State
• 17.5% K Garrett Rivas, Michigan
• 8.2% K Aaron Pettrey, Ohio State

This question doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot because Ohio State has three options and Michigan has only two options. Assuming that most people choosing are partial one way or another for a team, this question had to go to a Michigan player because their vote was only split two ways and OSU’s was split three. If you break it down by team, it looks a bit different. All of a sudden the question is split almost 50/50 with the slight edge going to Michigan.

Regardless, I think it is safe to say that if there were three Michigan choices and only two OSU choices that an OSU player would win. The conclusion is that the results of this question are stupid. How about someone take a statistics course before they set this up next time?

I know that most of you have probably seen the news stories about people standing in line for the last few days to get a Sony PlayStation 3. For every person who is standing in line, there appear to be about 20 who are scouring Ebay in the hopes of bidding on one. As a result, this $600 device is being sold on the secondary market for upwards of $3000.

MMM HMMM

I said $3000.

This is stupid. There is no reason to have a piece of $600 equipment for five times it’s retail price, with a limited number of games (around 20) at release time. Plus, if you are any sort of technology connoisseur, you would know better than to buy any piece of equipment on version 1.0. Doesn’t anyone remember what happened with the first batch of XBox 360’s? They had problems. Then as the shipments of the systems progresses, we stop hearing about problems as much.

Speaking of XBox 360’s, let me give a word of advice to all the people who are thinking about bidding on a PS3 this week on Ebay. I have an idea that will save you a ton of money if you have a little bit of patience.

Instead of the PS3 for $3000, buy yourself an Xbox 360 for $400 on Amazon.com.

Spend $200 on Accessories like controllers, batteries for controllers, etc.

Spend $200 on three games to hold you over for a few months.

You have spent $800 on Xbox 360 to solve your video game fix while PS3’s are in their first shipment and being bid up to ridiculous prices on Ebay.

So no, three months down the road go get your PS3. Sell your Xbox 360 and all your gear on Ebay for at least 50% of the original purchase price.

So at the end of the day the math looks like this. You spend $800 on Xbox Stuff. You get $400 back. Then you spend $1000 on the PS3, accessories and games ($600 for system, $200 on accessories, $200 on games.)

In total, you have spent $1400 and gotten to play with two systems. Also as compared with the ludicrous $3000 Ebay PS3 price, you have saved $1600.

(Or, you could just not buy anything and wait until the price drops and the systems are available 3 months from now, you dummy.)

The ESPN rumor site is reporting that the Indians are one of the teams who might go after JD Drew who opted out of his deal with the Dodgers. While I would love to see him playing left field instead of Jason Michaels, I would like to point out to the ESPN rumor people that JD Drew OPTED OUT OF A DEAL PAYING HIM $33 MILLION FOR THREE YEARS.

That, my friends, means he is looking to make some value MORE than $11 million per season. So, tell me again how the Indians are listed as one of the teams on your rumor site? Tell me how that makes any sense?

CC Sabathia made $7.25 million as the highest paid player on the team. Tell me how it makes sense to bring in a guy, over-the-top of every one of your current players? That should make negotiations in the coming years, just a real dream as everyone has an instant benchmark for their own money-making abilities in the game of baseball.

Plus, I would hope that if the Indians were going to spend over $11 million on free agents this season that they might look to put a couple people in the bullpen, where the last time I checked there isn’t a single closer warming up.

So, yeah, ESPN, I don’t think the Indians should really be attached to JD Drew. Or maybe I have no concept for what Larry Dolan is willing to spend this season to turn this team into a contender.

I am betting on the former, not the latter.

I always do this thing, where I imagine what the conversation must have been like in the room when people were making decisions on things that eventually reach my ears and eyes on TV, Radio, The Internet and other forms of media. With that in mind, I would like to arm myself like paranoid hayseed and run down the entire lot of people who are responsible for these headlines.

Seen any bad headlines today?

The Company Line lost its drummer a couple months ago, and we are currently looking for a new one. I don’t know how many of you are musicians, but let me tell you that the drummer tends to be the wackiest, most volatile position in any band. In The Company Line because we have Kiddicus, we can’t really afford another wacky, volatile member, so it makes looking for a drummer that much more difficult. Of course, I am (half) kidding, but I thought I might share with you the list of requirements for being the drummer for The Company Line.

• Your drum kit can not be bigger than a five-piece kit. While there are many drummers in rock that I love, who play on ginormous fusion drum kits like Neal Peart, Herb from Primus, Danny Carey of Tool, and Jimmy Chamberlin of The Smashing Pumpkins, our band is not going to be conducive to the style of drumming that takes place on that monstrosity. Roto-toms, tabla, gongs, china crashes and 1000 mini splashes are cool when Carter Beauford of The Dave Matthews Band uses them, but that isn’t us.

• When corresponding to ads that we have placed, if you send me a message in “IM Speak” you are either too young or not literate enough for this band. Maybe I am being elitist, but I would prefer someone not turn the word “anyone” into “ne1.” That isn’t English and at 27 years of age, I don’t need to be made to feel old while trying to write songs for my indie rock band. This is one of the last things that I have that makes me feel like I am still being young.
• If I can tell your favorite style of music by looking at your clothing, then you aren’t going to work in The Company Line. We have never subscribed to any sort of style as a part of musical taste. While we recognize the value of side-slinging messenger bags, we have never used them to identify with a music scene. While I know Todd finds his Converse shoes comfortable, he has never chosen them to fit into the scene that embraced and cast aside the trucker cap almost in sync with that idiot Ashton Kutcher. For short, we could call this “The Popped Collar Rule.”
• You can’t fear quiet music. This band has never been a rip-roaring party band, and as I have started to learn to play the piano, it occurs to me that this band is not going to get any “heavier” any time soon. If anything it will get softer. If that tweaks the massive amounts of testosterone running through your body, then then this isn’t the band for you.
• If you don’t have a job and expect to make it in music no matter what, then this isn’t the band for you. The Company Line is very serious about music, but at the end of the day, we are all working stiffs. We would love to make music a full-time job at some point, but mortgaging everything else in our lives in order to give it a shot isn’t something that we (or our significant others) are willing to do. At least not at this time. It is a romantic notion, but sorry. Maybe if we eventually write an album that is so good that it starts a bidding war amongst the labels, but until that time, we are going to continue to keep this thing as an extremely important hobby.
• If you can’t stand entire styles of music, then this is not the band for you. Todd digs country. Kiddicus digs rap and hip hop. I dig death metal and hardcore. We still find common ground and each like a bit of everything. While I don’t think you necessarily hear all that come through in our songs, we don’t really want to take anything off the table. I know for a fact that we will never do a rap song (because I would really stink at it) but stealing a little stylistic quality is never a bad thing.
• Drunks and druggies are out, of course. Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll is a cliche that kinda fell by the wayside with the whole day job thing. And in some of our cases, we never had that kind of ability in the first place. Right before I got married, one of the guys at the hotel I was staying at told me I had to turn in my “player card.” I cracked him up when I told him that I was never given one in the first place. Sad, but true.
• Finally, just don’t be a dick. We aren’t going to charm audiences with our good looks. We aren’t going to crack them up with our jokes. We aren’t going to blow them away with our ability as individual musicians. We just need to be solid, sincere, and not be dicks and we should do just fine as a band.

And that my friends is all it takes to be the drummer for The Company Line. Do you have what it takes?

Jen and I got back from our honeymoon to Aruba yesterday. We made the absolute best of every situation and overall, I am pretty happy with it, even though it would have been a nightmare for most people. (Although not the biggest nightmare possible. My friend who honeymooned in Cancun during a hurricane has that record. But anyway…)

The day we arrived, Monday, Jen found herself sick as the proverbial dog. So, on opening night of the honeymoon, she went to sleep sometime between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM after a horrendously greasy meal of mediocre tapas. To give you an idea of how bad the tapas were, I ordered the olive dish, which was supposed to be something special and meanwhile, I think they just emptied a jar of green olives into a container.

And the place we stayed at was less than stellar. La Cabana was a little on the dirty side, although they did refill all their soap dispensers every day (see picture.) It had a wacky configuration of rooms around their pool. Oh, and the bedroom in our suite had giant windows with a gorgeous view into the (wait for it) DARK, DANK HALLWAY OF THE BUILDING. No worries, though, because there were giant curtains to cover up the windows into the hallway. Or, I was thinking maybe we could just open the curtains and let people watch us sleep. I have always wanted to know what it is like to sleep in a fishbowl where every passer-by can just check out the little puddle of drool on my pillow. I am not sure what the reasoning was for the windows into the hallway from the bedroom, but they probably should have gone ahead and filled that up with walls at some point.

So after some bad dinner and a few Balashi Aruban beers, I tucked Jen into bed and sat down to watch some Monday Night Football. It wasn’t my first choice of things to do, but hey, I couldn’t be mad at Jen for being sick. I watched all the shitty pre-game for MNF and then the ESPN feed to whatever TV system was showing in our Aruban hotel room magically switched to ESPN2 for some wacky billiards trick shot competition. No MNF for me.

I went to bed at 10:00 PM.

Tuesday was by far the best day of our honeymoon. I booked a room at a different resort on Aruba (see picture.) Jen and I got up, packed up and moved over to The Renaissance hotel and resort which was absolutely perfect. Even the iguanas roaming around the pool area were cool. On top of that, Jen’s sickness had subsided to the extent that she was able to function and we had a great day just sitting in the sun, drinking and eating.

We also had a good dinner at one of the Renaissance’s great restaurants. Jen had salmon and I had a really great chicken dish. Jen drank wine, I drank beer and we were happy happy happy.

Then, I got whatever Jen’s sickness was to the power of 10. I had what seemed like something straight out of a NyQuil commercial, including, but not limited to, sore throat, sniffling, sneezing, the chills despite temperatures in the 80’s, a fever and a powerful and nasty cough. I was praying for the cold hand of death much of the rest of the week as I was overtaken by flu symptoms, dizziness and spells of coughing that made me want to die. But for whatever reason, I was able to rally for periods of a couple of hours, and Jen and I made the best of every opportunity we had. We spent time in the pool when I was feeling hot and feverish. We ate like champs when I felt like eating something. When I felt like my throat was going to explode we drank frozen drinks in the bar. Miraculously we had an amazing time despite all the things that were stacked up against us.

I even have a picture of us enjoying Thursday night Mexican night at The Renaissance, complete with live Mariachi band, which I will post later when I get it off Jen’s camera.

We even survived the 10 minute period where Jen thought she was going to faint on Friday.

I guess the point is (and I will try not too get to mushy) we survived and had a good time despite all the obstacles that were thrown at us. I think a lot of people would have packed it in and been disappointed in the trip, but Jen and I didn’t blame each other or anyone else for all the things that happened. For whatever reason, and many of you will think this to be out of character for me, we were too busy making the best of things and having fun wherever possible to be bitter about any of it. Anyone who knows me from before Jen and I were together will know that this has never been my M.O.

While I can sit here and tell you that it would have been nice to be healthy the entire trip, I think that this trip, the way it was, was even more useful and representative. It was the first time that Jen and I had ever traveled and vacationed together and I think it is safe to say that it would have put a strain on many couples. I didn’t even really think of it until just now as I am writing this, but Jen and I didn’t really fight over anything while we were on our honeymoon. We helped each other when we were sick. We had fun where possible.

We just dealt with everything. Hopefully this sets the trend for our whole marriage. Well, hopefully we don’t have to spend our whole marriage dealing with situations. But as those situations occasionally arise, let’s hope that Jen and I are able to keep dealing with them as we did on our honeymoon, and have as much fun together as possible along the way, whenever we can.

Me with an iguana next to the pool bar and restaurant