Day 4 - Redux

ALERT! Your old buddy TD is making his television hosting debut Wednesday night as the guest host of local Cleveland Sports talk show "More Sports and Les Levine." I've been on the show before as a guest "sports professional," the title my father used to hold, but this is my first shot at hosting. As my guest, I will be having on fellow Tribe blogger Paul Cousineau of The Diatribe. I met Paul in person last night at the Tribe game to discuss our plan. He couldn't be a nicer guy. Its funny because I've been reading his stuff online for so long and I think he is a brilliant, well thought out writer, then meeting him, he was just like me. A regular guy, probably my age, a big Tribe fan who blogs as a hobby.

It should be a lot of fun. I mean, how could it not be? An hour of me talking Cleveland Sports? For those of you who don't get Time Warner Cleveland channel 23 (which is most of the people who read this), I've been assured it will be up on youtube within a day or two. Once it is up, I will put the embedded screen on this site, as well as our Tribe blog Dump David Dellucci, which was renamed on Saturday, thanks to Casey Blake being dealt to the Dodgers.

SIDE NOTE: If you know me, you know I despised "Fake" for the last five years. I caught a lot of flak from commenters for my proclamation in this piece that the day Casey was dealt was the #3 greatest moment of my life, just behind the birth of Andrew and KU's national title. Said in jest obviously.

In the meantime, the show is on at 6 PM, replayed at 11 PM. I wish my pops were around to see it.

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Celeb question: Who the hell is this Shia Labeouf and why the hell and I supposed to care about him and his problems? Seriously, dude crashes his car and it makes major headlines. I checked out his IMDB page, his biggest role to date was in Transformers, which seemingly got him the role in the new Indiana Jones, which had to be terrible. Oh, but he may be battling an alcohol problem.... To quote John Bender: B-O-O H-O-O.

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Brett Favre, please, I beg you, go away! We are rapidly entering Elian Gonzalez territory.

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Watched another episode of Locked Up Abroad on National Geographic. That is one intense hour of TV. This time, an American couple, missionaries who were on an anniversary trip at a Philippines resort, were taken from their rooms by the Abu Sayef, a militant Phillipino terrorist group, and held hostage in the jungle for more than a year. The husband was killed during the rescue, while the wife survived. You have got to Tivo this show.

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Going to bed now....peace

An Ode to O'Hare...Kinda

It's a friggin miracle.... I actually flew back from Chicago today via O'Hare and made it home on time! Why is this so miraculous to me? Lets take a step back for a second and set the scene.

I've been flying in and out of Chicago for work now for two years pretty much twice/three times a month. I always have flown Continental to Midway and it was a breeze. Rarely was I delayed and Midway is located three minutes from my office and 10 from my client. Then one day in May, I see in the paper that Continental is discontinuing its service to Midway May 31st, so after that it's either O'Hare for me, or going back to Southwest, which if you were a past reader of this blog, you know I will never do. (For the story, click here.) So since June 1, I have been flying in and out of O'Hare. The first four times I have flown through O'Hare I was two hours late, cancelled and held over until Saturday, three hours late, and two hours late. Talk about the weak beav. O'Hare is a friggin nightmare. Check out the differences in the two for me:

Midway
1. 90% ontime
2. Continental gate is literally in front of the airport
3. The rental cars are in an attached garage a short three minute walk from the gate.
4. Midway is right by my office and my clients office, allowing me more time to stay at either place on Fridays.
5. There are probably 50% less people at Midway, meaning shorter security lines.

O'Hare
1. Up until today, I have yet to make it home any earlier than an hour late
2. The gate is in terminal two all the way at the end of the concourse
3. To get to my rental car, I have to wait for a shuttle, which then goes through terminal three, and terminal five, before getting to the rental car place.
4. O'Hare is 3o minutes away from my client with no traffic and 45 from my office.

I forgot to mention that I got there on time today, yet sat on the runway for 45 minutes because our gate was being used by another plane. So essentially when you are on time, its actually a bad thing.

Others have told me the answer is easy. Drop the anti-Southwest routine and get back to Midway, but if I do that, I lose my Continental status and miles, and other than Chicago, Southwest isn't flying anywhere direct from here anymore. I've got no choice but to suck it up and deal.

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Meanwhile, there is no better summer city than Chicago. We cannot wait to go there in a few weeks. Today, I took my clients to the most underrated place in the city, Hot Doug's. We buried four different kinds of Sausages and three orders of Duck Fat Fries. Here's what we ate:

Über Garlic Pork Sausage with Roasted Garlic Dijonnaise and Widmer Brick Cheese

Saucisson Alsacienne: Bacon Sausage with Crème Fraîche, Caramelized Onions and Comté Cheese

Merguez Lamb Sausage with Chili-Garlic Mayonnaise and Feta Cheese

Bell Pepper and Mozzarella Chicken Sausage with Pizza Sauce, Sauteed Peppers & Onions and Fresh Mozzarella Cheese.

How good? I'll be taking Andrew there two weeks from tomorrow and getting a photo of him with the great Doug Sohn himself.

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Can't wait for some live Tribe ball tomorrow night. Haven't been to a game in almost a month. The good news is I'll be going to three games in the next six days.

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Brett Favre - please go away...more on that later.

Day 3 - Redux

Now I would normally never bother to even mention, let alone discuss, the abomination called the WNBA, but they have finally done something newsworthy! In case you didn't hear, at the end of the Los Angeles Sparks/Detroit Shock game on Tuesday night, Sparks Forward Candace Parker got tangled with Detroit's Plenette Pierson and a melee ensued. Here is the video:



That video is comical in a way, but you have to feel sorry the most for two people. The first one, you wouldn't think to fell sorry for, but I do. That would be Rick Mahorn. The Shock assistant was clearly coming in as a peace-maker and got caught up trying to separate Sparks Center Lisa Leslie. She ended up going down and int he postgame press conference, she cried, saying she couldn't believe Mahorn would push her like that. Mechelle Volpel wrote in her ESPN.com piece:

Then there was the further absurdity of Shock assistant coach Rick Mahorn's knocking over the Sparks' Lisa Leslie. Mahorn, Detroit coach Bill Laimbeer and even L.A. coach Michael Cooper said after the game that Mahorn was trying to restore order -- but it didn't turn out so well.

No, it didn't. Why wasn't Mahorn -- it probably goes without saying that he is a very intimidating figure physically -- focused on restraining one of his own players? He simply had no business whatsoever laying hands on an opposing player.

Mahorn is now seen is the guy who pushed the woman to the floor, which couldn't be further from the truth. Sure, people saying Ricky is a little off from time to time, but my brother swears by him. He has spoken to him and says he is extremely broken up by the whole situation. Lets see what happens over the course of the next few days.

Then we come to the real victim if this "brawl," Shock star Cheryl Ford. Up until yesterday, Ford was best known as the daughter of Karl Malone. Now she will forever be known as the WNBA player who tried to hold back her teammate and tore her ACL in the process. That's right, Ford is now out for the year. It's very sad for her as she was just trying to calm her crazed teammate down.

Why do I care about this? I don't. I figured it was a better topic to discuss today than Eric Wedge's moronic decision to intentionally walk the bases loaded in the 5th inning, up 6-5, to bring in a new pitcher (Tom Mastny) who hasn't pitched in nine days and expected him to be sharp. A walk, followed by a first pitch grand slam from Jeff Mathis ended their chances of winning.

Day 2 - Redux

Summer Television is brutal. There is literally nothing on but garbage reality shows and Tribe ball. This has been a tough couple of weeks especially with the Tribe off for the all star break and then heading West for nothing but 10:00 PM start times, which obviously I can't hang for more than four innings tops these days.

At least Big Brother started last week. That's a three night-a-weeker for us. I refuse to watch any show in real time anymore as Tivo has ruined me for good. I am trying to watch random shows while on the treadmill. I gave Generation Kill (HBO) a shot the other day. It was average at best. Thanks to my boy Teddy, I did find a gem on the National Geographic Channel called Locked Up Abroad where it shows true stories of people in foreign countries who on their travels end up in jail for one reason or another. It's like that bad movie with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin "hairlip" Phoenix where Phoenix gets thrown in a Thailand jail for drug possession.

Other than that, we've given the Greatest American Dog on CBS a watch, but are one episode behind. It was pretty solid.

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A couple of weeks ago during one of Andrew's naps, I watched Revenge of the Nerds start to finish for the first time in probably 15 years. It was just as good as it ever was. Talk about an absolute classic. So many phenomenal scenes. You decipher for me which is the best. Here are my top four:

1. the Lambdas party trying to impress UN Jefferson.
-"So I say I gotta be freeeee. So I say I gotta be meeeee."
-The Omega Moo's arriving - "I could call my sisters, they're really spontaneous people." "not the moo's, they're a bunch of pigs."
-Wonderjoints - "you Moo's sure can party."
-"We thought you could use some more pigs for your party, nerds."

2. The Homecoming Carnival
-Lamar winning the javelin toss with his "aero-dynamic javelin" and "limp-wristed throwing style."
-Takashi winning the tricycle race
-"Eat a PI for Charity." Oger eating the pie "It's good....thisiswhy!"

3. The Coach Screaming at the Alpha Betas after losing the Carnival
-"when you were a baby in your crib, and your father looked down upon you. He had but one hope, that one day, my son would become a man. Well look at you now. You guys just got your asses WHIPPED, by a bunch of goddamn nerds. NERDS! Well if I was you I'd do something about it. I would get up and REDEEM myself. In the eyes of my father, my maker, and my COACH."

4. Trying to get into any fraternity they can and subsequent meeting with Lambda, Lambda, Lamdba President, U.N. Jefferson.
-"We went over your application, and it's not even close. Next time we recommend you don't include a group photo."
"Did we send a photo to everyone?"
"All except....Lambda, Lambda, Lambda."
"Here's one who will see us!"
"LAMBDA, LAMBDA, LAMBDA?"
"The're gonna love us."
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The Tribe has won seven of eight now that the pressure is seemingly off. Big shocker. Even better news, according to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports.com, both the Rays and the Mets are after my least favorite Tribe player of all time Casey Blake.

I'm Back

It's been a year, but I think I'm back. Temporarily, we will be here commenting on daily life. But we will be moving to our new home, todddery.com, hopefully soon. We've got our "crack staff," (aka the staff on crack) building the site. I tried to do it myself, and it's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

Since we've been gone, a lot has changed. Andrew is now running around, babbling up a storm and loves to shoot hoops in the pool.



80% of the people tell us he looks exactly like Leah. The other 20% say me. I don't think he looks anything like me, but its all good. I know I am biased, but the kid is the cutest kid I've ever seen. Not to mention the fact that he really is a good kid. He has a great temperament and loves to laugh and smile. Could he be a better eater? Of course, I mean, my man refuses to eat anything healthy - especially fruits and vegetables. One day he'll eat an entire piece of grilled chicken, then the next time around he won't eat one bite. He'll figure it out one day soon....I hope.

The economy is in the tank. Gas it almost $4 a gallon here in C-Town. The Indians have gone from a team on the brink of the World Series to a team in such disarray, they rank at the bottom of the league, which you know kills me. I have, however, chilled way the F down when it comes to my teams, thanks to one man, and one shot. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Mario Chalmers and the end of my misery.



I wrote about that night and the subsequent money off my back at length on my now closed-down sports blog My Teams Are Cursed. I'd probably still be whining over there, but once my first championship had become a reality (no I didn't dream it), my teams were no longer "cursed," and it was time to move on.

I took some time off, and while the Tribe was melting down, MD told me that last year we turned it around when I started blogging again, so I told him the only way I'd come back was if he shared it with me. That is when Dump Casey Blake started. It's 100% Tribe-centric and basically is my brother and me ripping and praising (but mostly ripping) our boys in red, White, and Blue.

My job situation is the same. Still working for the same large corporation and things have definitely changed. The truth is, you don't realize just how good you have it when you are working for a family-owned, small company. It truly felt like a family over there, but when we were purchased, it all changed. I'm just glad to have a job these days honestly. Do I want to be slinging cups, plates, and to-go containers the rest of my life? Negative. But that is what is putting food on the table and a roof over our heads these days.

Writing has become a passion of mine. If I could turn this into a book, a collection of short stories, blogging as a sports writer, anything, and I could get paid for it? I'd be in in a heartbeat. But that isn't reality. So for now, I'll just stick with this as a hobby and go from there.

We will see how often I can get to this, but I'm glad to be back blogging. I hope you all are too.