The Boy Will Not Be Intimidated

I will grant you the premise. As you reach the top of the second hill on The Intimidator, somehow your lap bar comes unhinged and, as you learned in physics class so many years before, you continue on, rising out of your seat and into the crisp black night air on an unencumbered trajectory, still rising upward as the shackled-to-the-track coaster car dips below you; everybody down there is looking up at you as you hurtle headlong through the blackness, knowing that when you start to arc downward, you will meet an abrupt end when you hit the asphalt or a camper in the Carowinds parking lot. I can see how that would be a bad thing.

The Mad Hatter

My wardrobe genetics come from my parents. My mom is elegant and graceful, while my dad will occasionally tuck his sweatshirt into his jean shorts. I fall somewhere in the middle.

For years I was on my own, free to pick out any macabre combination of menswear. I decided early on that I would not pay more than $20 dollars for any individual piece of clothing. That led to a thrift store phase, a wear-it-till-it-disintegrates phase, and a punny t-shirt phase. Nothing says cleverly fashionable like "Virginia is For Lovers" written in comic sans across your chest.

Now I have a wonderful girlfriend who has made it her mission to turn me from Frankenstein's monster into a cultured, sophisticated man about town. Out goes my sleeveless Black Crowes license plate t-shirt from 1998. In comes Hugo Boss. From the neck down, she can dress me however she pleases.

Better Than My Achy Breaky Interview

Tuesday night, I got to go see The Avett Brothers perform at Manifest Disc on South Boulevard. The first 400 people to buy their new live album got in. People rushed forward toward the stage. Those who couldn't get in pressed their faces up against the windows. A bunch of rent-a-cops hung out in the R&B section. The Avetts said they were only supposed to play for 30 minutes, but ended up going for a little more than an hour. Then they stayed and met each and every person who came to their show.

I was there to shoot part of a bigger story on the music industry. But my photographer and I stuck around until the end, and when I saw who I thought was their manager (I looked up his face on Google Images just to make sure), I asked for an interview. He swooped us backstage.

Defeated

I'm not much of a sports prognosticator, because I really don't know enough about sports to prognosticate. Yes, I know. I used to work at a sports radio station. I produce a television show about football. But I see myself as an outsider looking in, less Adam Schefter and more Jimmy the Greek.

My fear is this: If I plunge headlong into a deep conversation about, say, the Big East, I'll be outed as a fraud. I'm a fan, sure. But please don't ask me about the vertical jump of Virginia Tech's backup tight end. I'm afraid I won't know the answer.

Still, I have my favorite teams, and they all have one thing in common: they are terrible. I root for the Carolina Panthers (0-3), the Cleveland Browns (0-3) and the New York Mets (at least 18 games out of first place). I do like the Pittsburgh Penguins. They have a few Stanley Cups to their name, but since they inhabit the same city as the hated Steelers, nobody believes that I am really a fan.

I guess I'm patient. One of these days, I'll finally be able to gloat and revel in a championship won. But like any good Browns fan, I'll never see it coming.

My Parents: Harbingers of Presidential Doom

Jimmy Carter, before the curse

The spirits started swirling a few weeks ago when my parents bought Jimmy Carter's new book. Unbeknownst to us, that fateful trip to Borders set into motion a supernatural turn of events, in which Mr. Carter, submarine officer, peanut farmer, U.S. president and now pesky octogenarian, would nearly die, sort of. You can't blame mom and dad. They just wanted a chance to practice their necromancy.



In northeast Ohio, magic is everywhere. Cleveland is the home of Dead Man's Curve and Ghoulardi and Art Modell, whose final bane before leaving town doomed the Browns to an eternal state of purgatory. The black magic swirls around steel mills and across cornfields and through the oak trees. It is what makes covered bridges creepy. It is what made Drew Carey successful. It is what brings the gloom of a gray overcast sky nearly every day. Sure, the meteorologists say all the snow we get is caused by the winds that sweep over the surface of Lake Erie. But us Ohioans know the lake-effect is really a curse cast upon the land by the most powerful of elemental sorcerers, Dick Goddard.