Instead, I made this list of actual pieces of commercial media and entertainment that have made me produce tears, be they sadness tears or happiness tears.

I had some LeBron commentary here, but…there’s a reason I don’t blog about sports heavily anymore. Let’s just say that I think like Mark Cuban does on these guys.

I will say that [...]]]> (I like this kid, cause he’s like, “Here comes the next move – you’re about to feel tricked, little girl!”)

I had some LeBron commentary here, but…there’s a reason I don’t blog about sports heavily anymore. Let’s just say that I think like Mark Cuban does on these guys.

I will say that I 100% loved how the Cavs were playing up through about late December, but since then I’ve been really disconnected from this team, especially on days that Lost is on.

Now, let’s talk about something important. I saw in the store that they changed the logo to Connect 4.

This likely happened 12 years ago, and I couldn’t tell you what the old one looked like without cheating, so here’s an ancient online version where you can play against a computer.

I take great joy in knowing there’s a computer somewhere sitting at a computer playing against me, and it’s mad because I keep beating it.

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

Up today is Cleveland Frowns – they write a blog about an alternate reality where all sports teams are named after facial expressions.

First though – this guy in the picture is like in his 30s – why are you [...]]]> So let’s start getting those sports blogger interviews out of the closet.

Up today is Cleveland Frowns – they write a blog about an alternate reality where all sports teams are named after facial expressions.

First though – this guy in the picture is like in his 30s – why are you dressing up like french fries? PP thinks he looks delicious, btw.

1) Your logo seems to be some kind of rocket, with a frowning football inside.

Why don’t you change the name of your site to Cleveland Browns Smiling Guys and have a picture of a boot, with a smaller boot inside of the first boot?

We get a lot of questions about the logo. It’s supposed to represent a toilet with a frowning pile of crap inside of it. The eyes of the poo represent the watchful eyes of the Cleveland Fan, who continues to care, despite the steaming heaps that are continually piled on us by our local teams and others.

If our logo had a boot in it, it would be kicking Chief Wahoo and/or Browns owner Randy Lerner hard in the pants. You might be on to something. Maybe we’ll change things up one day.

2) For this next question, pretend I don’t hate dogs. The New Browns feel like a cloned dog to me. It looks and smells and even acts like my dog, but I just can’t connect with it. Will this ever end? Do you feel the same way at all or is it just me?

Yes, we feel something similar about the New Browns, maybe even worse because we like dogs and even a cloned one would probably make us feel better than these Browns do.

As for when it might ever end, we think that at least one but probably both of two different things has to happen.

First, it truly makes us sick that Randy Lerner owns these Browns and it’s hard for us to believe that the Browns could ever have any sustained success under his ownership. An NFL franchise is a most precious thing, especially here in Northeast Ohio, the cradle of professional football, but Randy Lerner doesn’t seem to care much for American football or the City of Cleveland.

He inherited the team from his father, a billionaire New York transplant who helped Art Modell move the team out of town, and seems to be far more interested in the English Premier League Aston Villa soccer club that he owns. We’re not sure that Randy spends more than a whole month in Cleveland in any given year, and wonder if his father ever did.

Why do people who care so little about something that so many millions of others care so deeply about get to own that thing? It’s one of the most fundamentally f*cked up things in our world. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Browns are so awful under such circumstances, and we’re not sure why we should expect anything different until those circumstances change. We wonder if eminent domain proceedings might work here.

As for the second thing, anyone who believes in the most basic principles of karmic justice might come to think that no major Cleveland sports team will win a Championship until the Indians stop using Chief Wahoo as a mascot/logo.

If the Red Sox were cursed for trading a guy for whom things worked out awfully well for, and if the Cubs are cursed for not letting a guy bring a goat into the stands at Wrigley Field even though the guy got rich and famous for it, then why wouldn’t all Cleveland teams be cursed for their town’s support of a Sambo-caricature created by white people to represent a politically powerless race of people who white people basically killed off.

We won’t say much more here because we know that folks tend to get irritated by this topic and we’ve written plenty about it over at Frowns, but Curse or no Curse — and how could we ever really know? — it would be awfully nice to have one less thing to worry about in supporting the Browns/Indians/Cavs. It will be an incredible clash between LeBron and the Curse in June. Also, we don’t mind the team name “Indians.” In fact, we like it. It’s the Wahoo cartoon that’s the problem.

This was a trick question. The answer was anything under two sentences or less OMG.
3) I have a stack of Post-It Notes that are different shades of purple. Respond.

Post-It Notes are useful, and purple ones are more likely to stand out amidst clutter. We recommend to anyone with access to a stack of Post-It Notes write in black marker “Check Frowns” on as many of them as you have computers and affix one each to the side of each computer’s screen.

I’m still reading answer #2 OMG AGAIN x2.

By the way, even thought I couldn’t disagree more about Chief Wahoo, I will still say go check out Cleveland Frowns if you like – they seem to be a nice group of peoples.

I’m man-crushing pretty hard on him since the Celtics win, so I think these are amazing. He fills it out well, and I don’t know how many other NBA guys you could say that about.

(LeBron2010 DOT COM – [...]]]> LeBron was in some Browns gear for some commercial campaign he’s got coming up.

I’m man-crushing pretty hard on him since the Celtics win, so I think these are amazing. He fills it out well, and I don’t know how many other NBA guys you could say that about.

(LeBron2010 DOT COM – your feed is for the entire “realcavsfans DOT COM” message board feed – I don’t want that. Please adjust.)

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’d be like if I did a guest post on a female-centric blog, today’s your chance to find out.

By the way, I’m totally willing to do guest posts for your blog, but only if I feel like it, and only if you set up a plausible fight scenario for me to write about involving a choo-choo train vs a person or character of some note.

Finally, if you’re the guy at my gym who fits the following description, listen up – I’m going to give you advice:

1) You wear 4-6 sweatshirts so you look bigger.

That’s really the only lasting impression I have, because it’s so ludicrous. You’re not that cold.

Anyway, twice in the past week, I’ve watched you walk up to girls at the gym, hand them your number, say something like, “you look really great – if you want to call me, go ahead,” and then immediately depart.

It’s starting to bug me, and if I see you do it again, I’m gonna say something. You’re horrifying these girls – I can see it their face. It’s not just because of your 4-6 sweatshirts, either. (Although they know you’re not that cold, as well.)

Ask her something – ask her anything – she is human being. Even try saying hello before you shove your number down her throat. Ask her if she can draw Texas from memory.

(This works, btw – I have tried it.)

(Hey Browns – nice coaching hire. WTF?)

I know it’s just an intern/staffer, but the fact that Arnold follows me on Twitter is exciting.

They post news updates re: the activities of the Governor – lots of these are links to his press conferences.

As a fan, having new Arnold material [...]]]>

(Hey Browns – nice coaching hire. WTF?)

I know it’s just an intern/staffer, but the fact that Arnold follows me on Twitter is exciting.

They post news updates re: the activities of the Governor – lots of these are links to his press conferences.

As a fan, having new Arnold material is refreshing and seductive. I’m establishing the lines of communication, building up to asking this staffer if they think the Governor could still beat a choo-choo train in a fight.

If you’re not following me yet, go do so – today I’ve pledged to use some form of the word “tag” in every Tweet I make. (As of this writing the site is all tagged up – does this happen a lot? All day yesterday it was acting funny.)

Jim Rome had Kobe on his show yesterday, and they recalled a story wherein they saw each other at a bar on a Saturday night in the off-season, and Rome wanted to go get dinner. Kobe declined, because he was going to lift weights. He’d been sidetracked from his morning workout, and had to go get it in.

Off-Hours Weightlifting is also a thing that I can’t imagine LeBron doing ever, and when I knock him, this is why. Is it an unreasonable standard? I don’t know – I’ll bet Tiger and MJ did Off-Hours Weightlifting. I do Off-Hours Weightlifting. It is what it is.

Overall, this week has been exhausting. My eyes hurt, and not in a good way. In a bad way.

I’m going to try and keep off the internet altogether this weekend, but may pop in when my Twitter addiction calls to me. (The world is heading straight to Wall-E, isn’t it?)

Anyway, I’ll have definitely one, and maybe two more book excerpts up today. It’s tough, because I want to post certain things, but really want those things to unravel in the natural course of reading the book.

It’s written in a certain order and way for a reason, and obviously it’s not exactly a “this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens” narrative style. Because you’re following so many characters, you’re left to make certain connections for yourself, which is part of what makes it a fun read.

What I’m really looking forward to is when you guys who have bought it start sending me your thoughts. I think it’s the type of thing that should inspire tons of discussion and speculation and joke-making among fans of it.

She knows the guy is a vampire finally, and she’s spent like the last 70 pages thinking about it.

In order [...]]]> (I’m determined to finish this awful piece of garbage book before the movie comes out. I’ve been reading it for like 8 weeks now, and last night made it to page 240.

She knows the guy is a vampire finally, and she’s spent like the last 70 pages thinking about it.

In order to try and get into a Twilight-reading mindset, I’ve decided to write this post as if I was Twilight author Stephanie Meyer. I invite you to share my pain.)

CHAPTER 1,438 – THE END OF ACT 1

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I should or not. The television was sitting there in front of me, and I’d been looking at it for several hours, debating whether to turn it on or not. My father, Jeff, had bought the televison many years ago – it was old now, but when he bought it, it was new.

Jeff liked to buy things. I call him Jeff because that’s his name, and I like to use names. When I was living in Ohio, everyone called each other names. Their real names. That was before I moved here, where I had to watch Jeff buy things. The day Jeff bought the television, it was raining, which is when water falls from the sky. Some people call it precipitation, but I call it rain, because it takes less time to say, and because I’m an outsider. That means I’m not like everyone else, and it’s only moreso here, because I moved here from somewhere else. Sometimes that means I don’t fit in with the people in this place, which is a different place from the place I came from before. I wish I was tan.

The rain on the day the television was purchased was a heavy rain, which means that in terms of water, there was more of it coming down than if it were lighter. The heaviness of the rain made me a little sad, because I don’t have as many friends as I did in the other place I lived. The rain here was heavy.

“Hey, let’s go buy a new TV,” Jeff said to me. “It’s raining, and the old TV doesn’t look good in the rain.”

The old TV was a seven inch hand-held from Casio. We had it propped up in the corner on an old cereal bowl. The bowl had a chip in it. I’d put the chip in that bowl when I moved here – I’d been trying to eat some cereal, and because I was so new and had no friends, I dropped the bowl. This is where the chip came from.

The chip was one quarter inch by one eighth inch. I knew the exact measurement because I’d used a ruler to measure the chip. The chip I made because I had no friends. I never did eat that cereal that day – instead, I took the bowl, and used it to prop up the old Casio handheld TV. This way Jeff, who’s my dad who I call by his first name, wouldn’t have to hold the TV in his hands anymore. I couldn’t believe how big the chip in this bowl was, and when I measured it, I knew everything would be different. Thank god I had that ruler.

The ruler was blue. It wasn’t a light blue, and it certainly wasn’t a dark blue. This meant the blue fell somewhere in the middle, although it wasn’t quite royal blue. Maybe it was plain blue. Plain. There’s a word to describe my life in this new place. P-L-A-I-N. Plain. What a word. Five letters, and not one of them the same. I had no friends here – I couldn’t believe it.

I took the plain blue ruler and picked up the bowl. The bowl with the chip. The chip that reminded me my heart was empty. The actual chip itself was little. I kicked it under the refrigerator, which was pale yellow in color, and had two doors. One for things we wanted to just be cold, and one for things we wanted to freeze. That part of the pale yellow refrigerator was called the freezer. It made sense to me. Nothing else did. I was so confused in this new place. This new place that was so new to me, because I’d never lived here before.

Jeff would hate the chip in the bowl, which is why I had to hide it under the pale yellow refrigerator. The kick I used to kick the chip was just soft enough to get the chip underneath. If I kicked it too hard, it might hit the wall and bounce back out. If I kicked it too soft, it wouldn’t make it under at all, which would mean I’d have to kick it again. I didn’t want to do this, because I was so tired from not having any friends, because I’m an outsider in this new place. Everyone looked at me weird. Like I was weird. Jeff wouldn’t understand. He was just my dad, and not my mom, and I called him by his first name.

Once I had hid the chip, I took the bowl and looked at it. I noticed for the first time was it white. A pale white. All white was pale, but maybe this was paler. Paler than white. I laughed to myself. Maybe I was going crazy from not having friends to go places with. It’s not like I’d know where to go anyway – I wasn’t even from here. I was from somewhere else. Someplace that wasn’t here. I looked at the bowl for another minute, and started walking to the living room. I tripped – just a little. Not a lot. Not enough to fall down. My heart ached again. I couldn’t tell Jeff. He was just my dad, and he wouldn’t understand. Nobody understands me, because I’m not from here.

I tripped over a chair. The wooden chair. The same one I’d eaten dinner in last night. I’d gotten home late from school, because I’d been out with a girl who I thought was a vampire. This was an amazing thing which would change my life forever, but I need to explain the chair. The chair. The wooden chair – that’s what was important right now. It was a wooden chair, made of wood. When I sat in it last night, never in a million years did I think I would trip over it that morning. But I did, because I was lonely, because I had no friends. This place was so strange.

I’d made chicken for Jeff and I for dinner. The dinner where I sat in the chair I had tripped over, after I’d hidden the chip in the bowl, which I’d used to prop up the Casio, which one morning Jeff and I were going to replace with a new TV, which I was sitting in front of now, wondering if I should turn it on. The chicken was good. I’d bought fresh fowl at the grocery store that afternoon, which is the time between morning and evening. The time of day I’m most aware of my lack of friends. No friends. Wow. How did I get here?

The grocery store Jeff had told me to go to was big. This was because it was one of two stores in town. It had been remodeled recently, because the other store was selling more food than them. I guess they thought they should make a bigger store to hold more food. Maybe if I had a bigger heart, I could have more friends. I was so alone. The other store was big. I’d only been there once, because I didn’t know how to get there, because I wasn’t from here. I was from somewhere else. Yeah, somewhere not here.

The outside of the other store was a dull beige, with bricks lining the top and bottom rims of the roof and ground. In front was a sidewalk, which was made of cement. Cement was heavy. Like my heart, which was alone from not having friends.

(TO BE CONTINUED – ONLY 400 PAGES OF THIS “HOW I TURNED ON THE TV AND WATCHED THE BROWNS” STORY LEFT.)

(“Four Secrets to Always Having a Job” might be the worst title to an article like ever – how about “Four Secrets to Getting Rich in Time to Quit Your Job in the Next 30 Minutes”? Where’s that one?

NOTE: As you know, I don’t have like a real job – I’m just [...]]]>

(“Four Secrets to Always Having a Job” might be the worst title to an article like ever – how about “Four Secrets to Getting Rich in Time to Quit Your Job in the Next 30 Minutes”? Where’s that one?

NOTE: As you know, I don’t have like a real job – I’m just looking out for those who might.)

***SPOILERS if you haven’t watched Heroes this week yet.***

My brother wrote a lengthy post aboot the two episodes of Heroes from this week, and I have to agree with everything he said.

Here is a piece.

Over the course of these two episodes I must have said to myself “Why didn’t he/she just…” about 30 times. Why can’t Future Peter just go back in time and kill Sylar before he got his powers? Why didn’t Sylar rip the door off its hinges with his mind? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It’s odd to say this, considering this a show about superheroes, but Heroes isn’t realistic enough.

Yeah, I mean they just don’t seem to think this stuff through – to me it feels like they have a list of “cool moments” they want onscreen, and put no thought into how they actually work.

The other problem I have is that it seems as if the template for the show is, “Find out about horrible thing that’s going to happen in future, attempt to stop said thing by tying strings all over apartment, finally stop thing, thus resetting the future into something different.”

There’s no weight to anything, because it feels like they can roll out the, “Yeah well the future changed, so that’s all different now. Oh, but this stuff is still the same, because we like giving Peter a scar on his face.”

I’ll still watch if I’m around or there’s nothing else to do, but I won’t seek out a time to do so again.

On a nice tangent though, it’s always nice to see my brother update his website – as far back as 1997, he’s been doing regular updates every 8-4 months. Like clockwork!

I take cold showers, I like to cut and shoot things, and I talk to my mom about all of it. I sound so interesting!

Here it is:

I’ve been reading for about a week now….STOP TAKING COLD SHOWERS! Are you crazy???? :)
(haven’t showed it to your Dad yet…afraid he might think you’ve totally flipped out!

That is, for those of [...]]]> (So glad I didn’t bother to search out that game lasterday…Browns-Steelers, I will watch online tonight.)

Here it is:

I’ve been reading for about a week now….STOP TAKING COLD SHOWERS! Are you crazy???? :)
(haven’t showed it to your Dad yet…afraid he might think you’ve totally flipped out!

That is, for those of you without the skills of deduction, from my mom.

(Yeah, it could’ve been from my dad’s mistress, but we don’t really get along, and I can’t remember the last time she emailed me.)

Cold shower #2 was just taken – here are more things I’ve noticed, and you know how I like things:

1) The mirror in the bathroom doesn’t steam up.
2) You start to dry instantly, and the entire drying process is faster than after a warm shower.
3) This is by no means easy. While it’s somewhat empowering, you want to be done. Beyond the 1-minute “stand there with clenched fists and feel powerful” phase, you get down to business and get finished.
4) You’re not cold when the shower is over. In fact, as soon you turn the water off, you feel this rush of warmth and energy.

Overall, I feel like this is not only good mentally, but it’s saving me a lot of time, due to numbers 1-3 above.

NOTE: My old friend Jordi’s website, The Serious Tip, turned two today – congratulations!

He also was wondering what, if any, sports blogs I read anymore. This is the list, direct from my RSS reader:

Blog Maverick – Mark Cuban’s blog. I don’t know if this even counts as sports – in fact, just now, I moved it over to “Tech/General Blogs”.

(That link goes to his post about why John McCain not knowing about computers is frightening. I completely agree.)

Deadspin – I don’t really “read” it – just skim the headlines in case there’s something interesting, which often there is.

The Big Lead – Only for the links/round-up posts.

True Hoop – As a (somewhat disenchanted) NBA fan, of course. Plus Henry writes about things that aren’t written about elsewhere.

Brian Windhorst’s Beacon Journal Blog – Cavs insight. Brian is also a good guy.

That’s all there is for me anymore. I figure anything significant that happens in sports or on sports blogs, I will catch wind of through those and ESPN DOT COM.

I also check other places now and then just for the hell of it, but most of my regular reading is entertainment/film stuff, and personal blogs of people I know or find interesting.

For example, you’ll see several things in WSM? that are just wish fulfillment, such as me getting oiled up and lifting weights in the desert.

You can’t do this [...]]]> There are certain things I put into screenplays that are there purely because I want to do and/or see them.

For example, you’ll see several things in WSM? that are just wish fulfillment, such as me getting oiled up and lifting weights in the desert.

You can’t do this in real life, because 1) you’ll be called a freak, and 2) you’re just not allowed.

Seriously – try going to a state park with a weight set and screaming out some reps. They’ll kick you out. Get a camera and a permit, though? You’re good to go.

Anyway, I may have talked about this on the old site at some point, but a dream is to have the following set-up in my house one day:

So even though this is the first page of something I’m working on, I like totally want that whole set-up, right down to the 50 degree showers every morning, but minus the Chin Meyers.

One of these days, I’m gonna work up the courage to start taking the cold showers. I’m not sure why, although according to this, it’s good for you.

As for the fake-empty white room, I have no idea about that, either. In fact, I don’t know why I do anything.

What I do know, is the power went off on the entire street today, possibly because of this.

This non-power-having period instigated one thing – an entire street-full of Armenians TALKING REALLY LOUDLY IN PORTUGUESE.

Now, because I don’t speak their language, I decided it’s Armenian New Year, they cut the power, and they’re all turning into werewolves tonight, at which point they’re coming to kill my roommate.

When I told the gypsy lady I was 1/4 black, [...]]]> I’m listening to the NFL DOT COM broadcast of Browns-Cowboys, and it is indeed Doug Dieken and Jim Donovon, so we like feel totally at home, except for the racist Armenians filling in the other apartments in this building.

When I told the gypsy lady I was 1/4 black, she started looking at us totally different.

Anyway, Doug Dieken. Last time I saw Doug, he was smoking a cigarette in the Terrace Club at Jacobs Field. It pretty much shattered my image of him, much like the time I was in Philadephia at a 76ers game, and saw Fred Carter smoking on a loading dock.

The whole thing was so horrible. I just looked at him like, “What’s with the smoking…and the loading dock?” He looked at me the exact same way, except without the “smoking” part.

Okay, I’m gonna listen now – Jim just said the Browns are in their “orange helmets,” which I’m almost positive are their “only helmets”. I’ve been gone from CLE for a long time now, but this is true, yes?

He also said this is the Browns’ biggest opener EVER. Why is this?

I have no idea about anything about the Browns this year, but somewhere I got caught up in the national holiday vibe of the NFL season starting.

Thus, I’ve signed up for the online radio broadcast thing on NFL DOT COM, and will listen to (I assume) Jim [...]]]>

I have no idea about anything about the Browns this year, but somewhere I got caught up in the national holiday vibe of the NFL season starting.

Thus, I’ve signed up for the online radio broadcast thing on NFL DOT COM, and will listen to (I assume) Jim Donovon talk aboot Derek Anderson, Braylon Edwards, and Blake Quincy, the back-up QB this Sunday.

(I know this isn’t his name, but I won’t look it up at the moment, and honestly can’t remember what it is. In a few weeks, I’ll come back and revise this post, so that all the info is correct.)

Why online audio, and not national TV? (I am in LA – I think the game is on today.) Well, I’m subletting at the moment, and there’s no cable in this place. I’ve only been here 5 days, and am only staying 27 more, so that’s the story.

Now, I could go to a sports bar or one of those Browns Backers parties, and do a lot of high-fiving and, “Yeah, I used to drive through Solon all the time!” and such, but I don’t think I will do that.

In other news, I washed my face with three separate kinds of soap this morning – this girl I’m subletting from has all these products she left behind, and I went all OCD and tried them all. One of them had like little pieces of gravel in it, which I guess is good for your face.

Also, if you Google “Derek Anderson” and then click the “Maps” tab, all the electricity at Google HQ will go out for an hour.