Finally! After four miserable games, we have seen last year’s team and it is good! Anderson was on target, Edwards was explosive and Lewis churned up the yards. And it was all against the Giants, the undefeated defending Super Bowl champions! We spanked them 35-14! God, it brought a tear to my eye!

For those of you who don’t know, I love my Browns. You cannot grow up in Cleveland and not be a Browns fan. It is not allowed. It is like learning to talk or to read. At age four, I told people “I want to play football for the Browns” when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I was not even a boy. As a child, my walls were decorated with Browns posters (Leroy Kelly and Mike Phipps) and I slept on Browns sheets. Later, I barked and screamed and cried for the Drive, the Fumble and Red Right 88. Like all good Browns fans, I hate Art Modell and Bill Belichick. And I love Bernie Kosar—the greatest Brown ever. I bleed orange and brown.

Since the team returned in 1999, it has been so hard to feel the love I had–the team has been disappointing year after year. We lost so much in the four years we were without a team. Last year, it appeared that they finally had it together and fans have been primed for a winning season this year. But it aint happened–we were 1-3 and our sole win was against the absolutely wretched Bengals. Until tonight. How sweet this is!

It was as I feared. I wish I was not right about this. Absolute radio is absolute crap. Nothing to listen to there, folks. Move along.

Did the world really need another classic rock station, albeit 80’s and 90’s classics? I love the music, but not 24/7. I need new stuff.

Fortunately the Virgin/AbsoluteExtreme stream is alive and well on the net. Check it out!

I am listening to the final hour of the UK’s Virgin Radio, just before it passes into history. I admit it is with trepidation that I wait for its new incarnation, Absolute Radio. I always hate it when something I love is messed with — because it is rarely recognisable as what I originally fell in love with.

I have listened to this station for the last 10 years, and through it I have learned to know and love bands like Manic Street Preachers, Travis, Coldplay (before they were famous in the US), Snow Patrol, Keane, Athlete, Embrace, the Verve and so many others. I found internet radio when it was in its infancy, and Virgin Radio was one of the first stations to broadcast on the net. I felt as if I had been freed from my prison of terrible American radio, able to explore real music, music that is still played with, you know, instruments. While I understand that not everyone in the UK shares my love for the station (citing repetition of the playlist, mostly), they have not had to listen to countless Clear Channel stations force feeding us the same Brittney Spears and Mariah Carey dreck from city to city, so they have no idea how bad radio can be. I can remember some very cutting edge US stations in my lifetime — but most American stations sound like utter crap now.

I also think the presenters (dj’s) are excellent for the most part. They seem to have a real love for the music–something that is also utterly lacking in American radio now. I do miss Pete and Geoff (Geoff is still with the station) in the mornings–they were hilarious.

Here’s hoping success isnt messed with too much. And does anyone else think the new station sounds like vodka?

I have been quite the slacker–two weeks without an update. I hate when others do that!

So this is certainly an interesting political season eh? We have banks going belly up (I just pulled my money out of WaMu–never thought *I* would actually have any interest in the economy!), a presidential election with a moose-huntin’ beauty queen and a gay marriage ban.

The latter issue puzzles me. Why do people concern themselves with what goes on in other people’s bedrooms? Libertarian that I am, I think the government should butt right on out of that. And all the hand wringing that goes on over the perceived “threat to marriage” is ludicrous. I think the staggering divorce rate has taken care of marriage already, thanks. I am in full support of gays getting married. Why should heterosexuals have all the misery? Seriously though, everyone should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. It makes me proud to be a Californian, and I hope my state continues to support marriage for everyone. Vote NO on Prop 8!

that Obama will win the presidency.

Wow, watching last night’s speech was something else. If there is anyone who says Obama cannot lead, they are just full of it. He had the crowd eating out of his hand, and if he had asked them to get out of their seats and take on John McCain personally, they would have done it. He is an exceptional orator, and while the Republicans love to point out how that is just a bunch of hot air, they forget other exceptional orators that have been elected President: Lincoln. FDR. Even their own Ronald Reagan. All of these men were able to stir people to action because of their ability to motivate others to their cause. The President cannot do everything, he needs to lead and inspire his team. I have full confidence that Obama will do just that.

I was so struck by the fact that it was 45 years ago that Dr King made his famous speech–would he have dreamed that 45 years later–to the day–a black man would be in serious competition for the white house? What a marvelous fulfillment of the promise he felt for his people. It is sad that it took so long, but I think he would be pleased. Especially by the fact that white people are voting for a black man–they are not judging him by the color of his skin, but by his character. Yes, there are still racist assholes out there, and I worry their votes will affect the outcome of the election, but I hope that the good in most people will triumph over the miserable few.

I don’t want to call it a “record store”, because it sells so much more. But that is what I knew it as. One of them still survives–and thrives–on the east side of Cleveland. I spent more hours here during my teens and twenties. The owner, a huge Paul McCartney fan like myself, always had the most incredible selection. Whatever you wanted, he would get it. Back before the internet, that was something in itself.

But what have we lost in buying music over the web? Mostly, the socializing with others who shared your passion. I met more Beatles fans in that place. The conversation usually went something like “Have you heard [obscure bootleg album name]?” “No, where did you get that?” and off you would go, in search of music that until five minutes ago, you didn’t even know existed, but now you needed. 

Of course, like all good 1970s era record shops, they sold all the stuff you had to have to properly listen to the music of the time: black light posters, incense, and t-shirts. They probably sold roach clips and water pipes at one time, most of these places did. But the best thing about the store was the large selection of “imports”–a code word for bootlegs. For a Beatles fan, these were the holy grail of records. In those wonderful pre-RIAA days, fans did not care what the suits thought. They were squares who just wanted to keep you down and silence artistic expression. They probably hated the music, too. We cared not what they said and bought the records anyway. This place was my main supplier.

This store still sells vinyl, which as any music lover knows, is superior to the throwaway cd in its flimsy case. The incense, t-shirts and posters are still for sale, along with bins and bins of cds and even cassette tapes. I still visit them when I go home, just to pick up an “import” for old-times sake, even though I can easily find them on the internet. The internet doesn’t have the owner, his love for music or an old Abbey Road poster on the wall.

I am beginning to think I have a target painted on my car. Yes, for the fourth time this year, I have been involved in a car accident! Two were small dents (one of which was my fault, I backed into a pole in a parking garage. The other was a freak thing where an ambulance attendant (dumbass #1) did not secure the wheels on his gurney and it rolled into my car door). A much more serious one happened back in January, when, three days after picking my car up from the body shop after the pole incident, a woman (major dumbass #2) turned left in front of me and totalled my purple PT Cruiser. My knee has finally healed. I am still having bad dreams from that accident and still going through arbitration with the insurance company.

So yesterday, I am driving my new PT Cruiser through a parking lot and Dumbass #3 pulls out and just slams into the side of my car. Of course, the kid is driving a big fat monster SUV with tow hooks on the front of it. Those tow hooks rip into my chrome wheel (and my fender), bending it so the car is not drivable. WTF do people need that shit on their car for? I asked him and he had no idea (”they just came with the car, man, I dunno”). SUV drivers are so invariably assholes on the road–they expect everyone else to get out of their way or suffer the consequences.

I feel so depressed about this–I work hard to have a nice car, pay out the wazoo for insurance, and dumbasses keep finding me.

So check out this page from the 1974 Sears catalogue. I was twelve years old that year and in 7th grade and I thought these fashions were HOT. Yes, I did–I actually owned that very pair of shoes and those blue plaid pants, which if I remember correctly, were very itchy in their magnificent petroleum product way. I did not have the bodysuit, however; even I knew that was a fashion disaster in the making. I can remember girls who did though, and how they would be in the bathroom stall at school, trying to snap the crotches and failing as the thing sprang up to their necks like a crazed window shade. Gawd, I can’t believe I dressed like this!

Don’t you just love the Lemon Frog logo? How hip. How cool and so very with it. Note the bubbly green type–taken straight from that black light Haight-Ashbury concert poster hanging on your wall. Sears was really against The Man and very Anti-Establishment–but shhhh, your parents don’t know that. See how cool we are?  Lemon frogs are like strawberry alarm clocks and plasticine porters with looking glass ties but better, ’cause you can lick one and get high.

So by now you’ve all heard we had a big ol’ earthquake today. I was sitting at my desk and when the shaking started, my coworker (from New York City) and I (from Cleveland) looked at one another, and said “what do we do in an earthquake?” Finally, I suggested that we should perhaps back away from the window. We learned later that we should have dove under some heavy furniture. Great–the only furniture in our office was some flimsy IKEA desks that would collapse if a dictionary fell on them.

It made the morning more exciting, at least.