FilteringCraig

I was all set to just keep this whole situation positive. The Browns have been a pleasant surprise all season. They started horrendously. They ran Charlie Frye out of town after the first week of the season against Pittsburgh. And then things started happening. Derek Anderson emerged as a legit starter at QB. The offensive line proved to be a positive after being a negative since the Browns returned to NFL action in 1999. Jamal Lewis ran for over 1000 yards despite the critics saying he was finished. Braylon Edwards showed up with a renewed sense of maturity that translated to success on the field while not providing newspaper fodder off the field. Same with Kellen Winslow. He continued his maturation despite reported soreness that would prove to be catastrophic for most other human beings.

All that will have to wait for a little bit as I deal with the horrible taste in my mouth after watching the Titans squeak into the playoffs against a Colts team that was playing their third string. In case you didn’t know, the Browns needed the Colts to beat the Titans last night to secure a spot in the playoffs.

I knew going into this weekend exactly what I should expect. The Colts had nothing to play for, so they weren’t going to play their starters too long. I knew this for a long time. I knew this before the previous week’s action had finished and the Browns had lost control of their own destiny in a tough game against the Bengals. I know the Browns had a chance to keep the story in their own hands. I know this.

And then I watched the Giants take the Pats to the brink. The Giants, who technically had nothing to play for put it all on the line against the 15-0 Patriots just to make sure that they kept the Pats honest. And boy, did they keep the Pats honest. The Giants tugged on Superman’s cape for more than three quarters before the Pats finally put the Giants away to put their historical season in the books.

Contrast that with the horrendous game I watched last night between the Titans and Colts. The Colts played their starters for only a quarter and the Titans still only eeked out a 6 point win. I watched as Lendale White put the ball on the ground twice. I watched as Vince Young went down with some kind of leg injury. The problem was that the Titans defensive line wasn’t playing against a single starter on the Colts offensive line. They just pinned their ears back and ran at Jim Sorgi, who never had a chance to fulfill the dreams of all those Browns fans who emailed him all week. And even if he could have dumped the ball off fast enough, he wasn’t throwing to Reggie Wayne, Anthony Gonzalez, Dallas Clark, Marvin Harrison or even Bryan Fletcher. Those guys were all on the bench. He wasn’t handing the ball or dumping screens to Joseph Addai. He was attempting to turn a man named Craphonso into a player.

Now, I don’t really blame the Colts. I don’t want you to think that I am trashing them or their coach, Tony Dungy. That would be a cop out too. I don’t know what I want. I don’t have a solution. The Colts would have looked really stupid if they had played all those starters and one of them had gotten hurt. But still, they did manage to work out Reggie Wayne long enough to make sure he was the league’s leading receiver before the first half was over. That included him taking some earth shattering hits on quick passes. Why is it that the Colts were willing to risk injury for that, but not to try and win the game? I don’t have the answer to that question.

What I do know is that the Browns earned every single win and loss on their schedule. The Browns earned the win in Baltimore just like they earned the loss in Oakland and the loss in Cincinnati that put their fate in the Colts’ hands. And while I am still not blaming the Colts, I do know that the Titans didn’t earn that victory last night. It was sloppy, the universe was seemingly against them as they lost the turnover battle and as injury seemingly caught up with them. The unwillingness of the Colts on the other side was too much for the Titans’ ineptitude to overcome.

That, my friends, is a bitter pill to swallow.

So, we can wait a little while longer before we look to the future of this surprising Browns team. Right now, I just need a bit more time to curse into space.

Here is a picture of the little one and me before Christmas dinner.

Now, I bring you my update from Christmas in bullet point format.

• Thank goodness for Slingbox. I arrived in Indy on Saturday, and didn’t have to worry about where I was going to go to watch the Browns game on Sunday. Just find a relaxing corner of the house. Push the power button on the laptop. Connect to the wireless. Start Sling player and change the channel. That’s it.
  • Unfortunately for one friend who lives in Texas, my slinging meant that the box was unavailable for his use. He called me shortly before game time to make sure that I was using it because he didn’t want to have to go find a bar to watch the game if he didn’t have to do so.
  • Unfortunately for all of us, the Browns defecated the bed and lost to the Bengals, mostly due to Derek Anderson melting down before our very eyes when the spotlight was brightest.
• Amazon Wishlists rule. I got a lot of cool stuff, mostly because I picked out a lot of cool stuff. I got the first two seasons of Rescue Me, the second season of Extras, and plenty of other good stuff like running clothes gift cards, etc.
• Unfortunately, some people don’t play by the Amazon Wishlist rules. What I mean here is that if you are going to buy something on someone’s wishlist, make sure you BUY IT OFF the wishlist so, like a wedding registry, it disappears and nobody else will buy that item for someone.
  • As a result of the above scenario, I bought a copy of BioShock for the Xbox 360 from Jen’s brother. It is an AWESOME game that I am enjoying immensely, but giving him $50 wasn’t the point of buying the gift. It worked out cleanly, but still. Just buy things off the list and make sure they disappear from the wishlist.
• Uncle Craig was in effect this weekend as Jen and my nephew Nathan was around for Christmas. Uncle Craig is a very fun persona. I have about a million noises that I can make to entertain children. I have all kinds of clicks and whistles, as well as Nathan’s personal favorite, the hand fart. By that I mean, I can squeeze my hands together to make a farting, squeezed balloon type of noise.  Between that and constantly lifting Nathan in the air and faking sneezes, I was a very popular buffoon this weekend. Combine this with the fact that Jen and I gave a really awesome kid gift, and I would say it was a successful trip for Uncle Craig.
• I have never claimed to be cool.  That’s why I was really excited about one of the gifts that Jen got for me.  I got a Kitchen-Aid mixer.  I know it isn’t a sexy gift, but no kitchen is complete without one.  I do a lot of the cooking, so I am happy to have it.  Now, my goal is to find a recipe for the honey wheat pizza crust that they use at California Pizza Kitchen.
• Dressing up for Christmas dinner isn’t something I am used to.  At my parents house we never “dressed for dinner” on any holidays at home.  At Jen’s dad’s house we all wore suits and ties for dinner.  It isn’t a bad thing, but it does feel a bit strange doing all that to stay in.  It sure helps out the family picture, though.
• The weather in Indy was really nice and I started running again.  I haven’t really run since October 17th.  When the first snow came, I got kind of lazy and complacent.  When we arrived in Indy on Saturday in the mid afternoon, the weather was in the mid 50’s, so I went out and ran a very painful two miles.  Taking two months off from running makes the first run back a very painful experience.  It wasn’t easy to get the two miles in.  I ran another two miles on Christmas Eve when the weather was still in the mid 40’s and it went much better.  Now, I am back in Cleveland where the weather is in the 30’s or lower with an icy mix of rain and flakes.
• The holiday break is a good time for me to listen to music because all my radio shows are on vacation.  I am something of a talk radio addict, but when there isn’t any fresh content to listen to, I immediately go back to music.  On the way home yesterday, we listened to a bit of the new disc by Serj Tankian from System of a Down.  Jen hated it.  We also listened to some of Dashboard Confessional Unplugged, which I find largely annoying lately.  We listened to Counting Crows Live at the 10 Spot from their live album.  Those songs from Recovering the Satellites are still my favorites in the entire Counting Crows Catalog.  (How about that for alliteration?)  We also listened to ( ) by Sigur Ros.  It is very ambient, but it makes me happy.

And that is where I am going to leave this list.  I had a nice first Christmas away from home.

On Break.com there is a video of a guy giving some cops a hard time for parking illegally and then using some inappropriate maneuvers to get back into the flow of traffic. And just so you don’t think this guy was giving them a hard time for nothing, they weren’t in an emergency situation. They were getting some grub and refreshment at 7-11. Thank heaven, indeed.

Dude Accuses Cops Of Illegally Parking - Watch more free videos

Brother vs. Sister has taken a dramatic turn after this video. A brother LIVES for the opportunity to embarrass the ever loving spit out of his sister. So, check out this little girl getting PWNED by her brother as she attempts to sing “Barbie Girl” by Aqua into a webcam. (Yes, I know the name of the group that sings the “Barbie Girl” song. Come on Barbie, Let’s go party.)

Brother Owns Singing Sister With Pillow - Watch more free videos
I wish I had a video camera growing up. Challenge your friend to walk on top of a three foot wall in your backyard. Increase the “difficulty” by telling him he needs to do it with a box over his head. As he gets almost all the way across, do a flying drop kick into the box and knock him halfway across the back yard. Walk into the back yard and kick the box one more time for good measure. I have a younger brother, and I feel as if I have been robbed of opportunities by being born too late to realize online videos are the way to go.

Box Prank Ownage Best One Yet - Watch more free videos

I will be playing a song at Peabody’s on Friday night with my old guitar teacher.

KB and the Riptides play their annual Christmas show and I have been asked to do a song with him.  I will be playing it without the rest of my band, The Company Line, and it would sure be nice to see some friendly faces out there when I am playing all by my lonesome.

So, it is all happening at Peabody’s Down Under in Cleveland on Friday December 21st.  The show starts at 7:00 PM and I have no idea what time I am going up there to play.

Hope to see some people out there then.  I will be doing one of the new tunes that The Company Line has been so hard at work on.

This week, I got a new car and I love it. I have never had a brand new car before, and to be able to pick it up and see 70 miles on the odometer is a wonderful feeling. I ended up with a silver Toyota Camry XLE with navigation, leather, heated seats, keyless entry and starter, MP3 audio port, satellite radio, butt warmers and a “spoiler” which I didn’t necessarily want, but happened to be on the car that was in stock and most closely matched my desired attributes. Getting here was quite a long process though. I thought about many different cars. I drove many different cars. I thought hard about spending a lot more money and tried to consider spending far less money. I ended up kind of in the middle with lots and lots of toys.

As I said before, I tried out lots and lots of cars before I came to the decision on the Camry. I will be honest right now and say that the Camry isn’t necessarily the sexiest automobile in the world. It isn’t a sports car. It isn’t quite nice enough to be considered a luxury car. It isn’t rugged like an SUV or different enough to be one of the cool new crossovers. As much as I would love to say that it doesn’t play into it, the whole ego thing is a big part of buying a car. It isn’t something I need necessarily, but I would be lying if I said that it hasn’t been fun driving a brand name like Lexus for the past 5 years or so, between two cars. Then again, I never had one of those cars new. In fact, in both cases, I got great deals from company executives who were looking to unload their cars off of company deals.

So, in my travels to find the next automobile, I drove two Lexus’. I drove the comparable car to what I just turned in, the ES 350. I also drove the IS 250 all wheel drive. Those cars were both amazing. Then again, nowadays, these cars both run somewhere north of $40,000 once you outfit them with what I would consider an acceptable amount of toys, the biggest being a navigation system. I know the whole navigation thing seems like an overdone feature that most people don’t need. I can’t totally disagree with that opinion. What I would say is that it is the kind of thing that once you have it, you can’t go back. It isn’t quite as dire a need as air conditioning, but I have had to drive rental cars without navigation after having navigation and it is worse than that naked feeling I get when I don’t have my wallet in my back right pocket. Anyway, despite those cars having cool stuff like air conditioned seats and everything else, it seemed that I wasn’t going to be able to make that car happen for less than $600 or more per month.

Next, I spent some time driving the new Honda Accord. I had an Accord for a while in college and I found that to be a great car. I drove the new Accord and almost pulled the trigger a couple of times. Then I went and drove one with the navigation system installed and decided that it wasn’t for me. The nav screen is pretty far away from the driver, and you have to use some wacky dial to control it as opposed to the touch screen offered in the Lexus and the Toyota. As strange as it may seem, the dial-operated navigation control was enough for me to rule out the Accord. Then I was reading that some people don’t like the new Accord because it rides loudly and Honda may have screwed something up in the wind tunnel portion of their redesign. That made me happy.

I considered driving a lot of other cars. I spent a good amount of time looking at Nissan. I have loved the Murano for a while, but that car can also cost up toward $40,000 once it is outfitted with cool stuff. I like the Toyota Highlander, but the redesign put it on the chassis of the Avalon instead of the Camry, and it seems so much bigger than it used to. It, like the Murano, can cost as much as $40,000 too. Seriously, people, when did cars start to reach the $40k region instead of just sitting comfortable in the $30k region? Pretty much any car can cost $30k today. There are Hyundai’s that can cost over 30 now I think.

And that is where the story ends. I got the Camry with all the toys. I also decided to go with a slightly less fiscally responsible option and lease it for 3 years and 45,000 miles. I really like the idea of not having to deal with the problems that I have dealt with my entire life with cars that are over 50,000 miles and heading toward 100k. I don’t want to deal with those types of problems anymore if I don’t have to. And not dealing with those problems is worth something to me, to be sure. So, now I can drive comfortably, quickly, and with a headphone jack to play anything that I can put on my iPod, while always having access to shortcuts and back roads via the navigation system.

Thank goodness for Youtube, because I don’t know that I would have wanted to miss out on this enraging performance that Fergie did of a marginally classic song. She gives physical shoutouts to Axl Rose’s version of the song with Guns N’ Roses. But what I found most enraging about this is how she says “Ya know ya did” after that part where the lyrics say “you used to say live and let live.” Just wait for it. It happens twice during the verse. See how angry it makes you.

We did another practice show last night. If nothing else, check out the opening where I stutter my way through the plug for my family’s business. Not a very good start. I am hoping as we continue this that Jordan will get comfortable enough to call me out on my bad lines. I figure honesty applies to bad radio as much as it does to good radio.

Also, we recorded this after The Company Line practiced, so you can hear my voice is a little bit roached.

I am taking the Cleveland Sports Curse podcast to local AM radio here in association with some advertising I have been doing. As a part of the package, I get to co-host a weekly sports talk radio show sponsored by my family’s business, Lyndall Insurance. Before the show airs officially on January 12th from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM on AM 1540 WKNR2, I have been doing some practice shows with my co-host Jordan Sherwood.

Anyway, here are the first four segments that we did as a show last week.

I swore off reality TV last year. I stole a page out of Ron Bennington’s book, from the Ron and Fez show and adopted his philosophy of not watching any show where people get “voted out.” That ended up eliminating almost all “reality” television completely, and I was happy. Sure, I didn’t watch “The Biggest Loser,” “Survivor,” or even the latest iteration of “American Idol,” but I also didn’t have to deal with the horrendous piling up of clichés that emanate like a bad stench from most reality shows.

And then I saw a “reality” show that I really wanted to try out. “Kitchen Nightmares” is definitely a reality show and it definitely has its share of clichés, but I can’t stop watching this one. The premise of the show is simple. Gordon Ramsey goes out and visits struggling restaurants and he helps them to try and pull out of their mess. He attacks the problems from a business perspective, from a staffing perspective and also from the standpoint of the menu.

He chides owners who overstaff. He ostracizes staff who can’t work well together and communicate in the kitchen. He picks at wait staff that can’t help the kitchen by selling the pre-made specials. He smashes chefs who have overly complicated menus and frozen ingredients. Last but not least, he makes everyone work on improving cleanliness and cheesy decor wherever he goes.

The rules worth learning from Ramsey are this. Every restaurant must be spotless. Every restaurant needs to have a signature item or two. Every restaurant needs to game plan for certain busy nights by staggering guests and having some pre-made options to keep the pressure off the kitchen. That’s it.

The rest of the show is about Ramsey trying to negotiate with personalities that don’t want to listen to a guy who is obviously knowledgeable and successful. There were two episodes that dealt with Italian restaurants in Long Island and Jersey respectively. Those two shows were almost like an American guide to stereotypical people from those two regions. Ramsey finally convinced this one Guido kind of guy from Long Island that he had to work instead of just trying to be the best dressed host who could do lines from The Godfather.

Also, keep in mind that the show is gimmicky. The restaurants are always going to be able to pull off at least a partial reclamation because word gets out that the restaurant is going to be on TV and that the menu has been redesigned by Gordon Ramsey. But even giving that, the show is compelling. It is interesting to see people who are as bad at running a restaurant as some of the people who try out for American Idol are at singing. And just like those people on Idol, these restaurateurs think that they are going to be franchising every part of their failing businesses.

So, even if you swore off reality TV like I did, I think there might be some room for Kitchen Nightmares.