(blog for visitorslockerroom.com)

from an AP report on Shaquille O’Neal arriving in Cleveland today:

O’Neal, who will wear jersey No. 33 — his high school and college number — in Cleveland, is staying at a posh downtown hotel during this visit.

He hasn’t decided if he will buy a house, rent or stay in a hotel during his time with the Cavaliers, his fifth NBA team.

As a native Clevelander, I can tell you –if Shaq is still debating about buying versus renting– his plane has not landed yet. I’ve seen this discussion countless times with friends transferred to Cleveland and it always ends the same, hilarious way:

• “Will we be in Cleveland long enough?”
• “Do we know the areas well enough to buy?”
• “Should we wait to see if you like your job?”

Then –usually at their first cocktail party– they overhear some one mention how laughably cheap their house was and, the next day, they buy a house. Once you hear how much a house sells for in Cleveland, all those questions go out the window. It’s like when your dad passes a garage sale with $1 bikes- he doesn’t care if you have no room for them; he buys them because they are too cheap to pass up. I know one lady who moved to Cleveland from San Francisco (the most expensive real estate market in America). She ended up buying four houses.

Take this quaint, three bed room house on the east side:

Sure, it’s small for a NBA center, but guess how much it retails for in Cleveland, OH: $950. To buy, not rent. By comparison, there’s a guy across my street in Chicago selling a stroller for $400.

– end notes –

• full real estate listing for the $900 house:

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/12847-Euclid-Ave_East-Cleveland_OH_44112_1106799392

• And, of course, you can’t be discussing renting versus owning without hearing from the master:

facebook.com/worldsdumbestman

Facebook must have repeated (when I chose “worldsdumbestman” as my URL) that I can NOT change it and that it would be permanent five or six times- like a parent talking to a kid who wants to buy yellow shoes.

Years ago, when I chose WorldsDumbestMan.com as my website, I thought it was a great idea. SeanFlannery.com was not available and WorldsDumbestMan.com, I thought, was a funny alternative that is both easy to remember and easy to spell.

It has, in truth, been a disaster:
 

You would be amazed at the number of incorrect combinations people have created, trying to remember my website:

• “GalaxysBiggestIdiot.com”
• “DumbestManInSpace.com”
• and (my favorite): “HistorysFirstMoron.com”

Occasionally, I think people are not even trying to remember the website and, instead, are just sharing their negative image of me. Why else would I hear, “WorldsBiggestDrunk.com” or “WorldsMostUnreliableEmployee.com”?

– II –

No matter how many times a comedy fan forgets me because of my website, its address will still be worth it from an incident that happened nearly ten years ago. At the time, I was not even in standup and was, instead, just using WorldsDumbestMan.com to post letters to friends (you can still read a few of them here). Each letter was a raucous story about drinking, being thrown out of classes, fired from jobs- all the stuff you do in your early 20s (or at least I did). At the same time, there was a different Sean Flannery who wrote highly technical spy novels. In fact, they were beyond technical from what I have heard- for people that find Tom Clancy too approachable.

One week –just after I graduated from college– he (the other Sean Flannery) was on Oprah and about a dozen or so of his fans found my website and read my letters, thinking I was one of the world’s leading experts on military threats. The front page of my website –at the time– had a letter where I talk about getting drunk on beer foam at a party because the keg’s tap was broke (I was the only person drinking, yet I kept yelling “house beer”). At the end of the letter, I mention, passingly, that I was being audited by the IRS because I forgot that a seventh employer had fired me that year and, due to the oversight, failed to file a W2 for that six hour shift.

The emails from his fans were HILARIOUS and, to this day, make every mistake about the website worth it.

– Endnotes –

The real Sean Flannery (to spy fans… …and a man who does NOT look like he drinks beer foam out of a broken, thirty dollar keg):

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chilarious/2009/06/your-friday-internet-jokestorm-june-19.html

(blog that I wrote for bleacher report, a sports website)

As a sports writer, I am required to write about a baseball memory with my father this week. But, before the panic of reading more baseball nostalgia sends you clicking away, please know that I am from Cleveland. Thus I do not have the same boring wistfulness of, say, a Dodgers fan who got to see a stately victory in perfect weather with his dad.

Instead, I would just like to share the two quotes I remember most vividly from old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Both were stated, well, yelled, in near terror, during the second game of a back-to-back double header against The Detroit Tigers. The Indians were destroyed in both games (*) and, by the middle of the second game, the fans were hammered with nothing to watch.

Two or three fans already ran on to the field during the first game and, when it happened again during a pitching change in the second game, an angry, impromptu announcement blared through the stadium. In that same hostile tone they narrate drug commercials with (”does being high look cool now?”), the PA announcer shouted:

“$200 and a night in jail- doesn’t sound like a good time, does it fans?”

With that, about two dozen fans –from ten different parts of the stadium– ran on to the field. Fans were being lowered down to the field by friends; running with banners; climbing back up walls; dodging police officers- it was like a border had collapsed. I was never more proud to be from Cleveland. “Actually”, our city answered, “that sounds like a pretty great time.”

II

The next inning, a woman started stripping on top of the bleachers, using the stadium’s play clock to balance herself. Security guards immediately ran towards her, but they were quickly blocked by half the men in my section. The guards realized they would never power their way through this crowd and, half-defeated, I heard one of them yell,

“Fellas- I want to see this as bad as you, but there’s a 200 foot drop off on the other side of that clock!”

The crowd then let him pass. He reached the women, helped her down, and then lead her to be arrested while wearing his yellow security jacket. The crowd applauded both of them like they just saw Bob Hope introduce Marylin Monroe. My dad and I looked at each other. We both knew that we had just witnessed some thing important: the most chivalrous moment in Cleveland history. It has since been called, “The Fairy Tale of Lake Erie”.

(*) This was back when the Tigers had Fielder, Fryman, Tettleton and every one in their prime; and The Tribe had people like Stan Jefferson starting so it was never even close between the teams

–versus–

A View To A Kill

Which movie is more likely to have a scene with a helicopter landing on a wedding?

I’ve been added to a couple of shows in the Just for Laughs Festival (the previous list in in the next post). Here’s the two new shows:

• Best of the Fest: Comedy Festival Preview
  Monday and Tuesday (June 15th and 16th)
  $10, Zanies
  1548 North Wells

Please check me out at the prestigious Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, in two weeks. I’ll be performing in several shows (listed in order of which ones are probably best for seeing me):

• Chicago Stand-Up Run-Down
  Friday and Saturday, 9 PM (June 19-20)
  $12, The Lincoln Lodge
  4008 N. Lincoln Ave.
• Double Threat- opening for Jim Breuer & Danny Bhoy
  Saturday, 7 PM (June 20)
  $20, Lakeshore Theater
  3175 N. Broadway
• JFL Open Mike
  Tuesday, 7 PM (June 16)
  $0, Bella Bacino
  75 E. Wacker