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.
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:
• Re-enactment of Every Conversation I’ve had about My Website •
comedy fan: “Hey man, I keep checking-out your website but it never works?”
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.
• Re-enactment of Every
Email I’ve received from • fans of Espionage Novelist Sean Flannery
“WOW. You are a lot different than I imagined. I never pictured a former cryptographer having
this much fun! I can’t believe you stole your
car out of an impound lot. Did your friend realize that he’s helping one of the world’s leading
writers on tribal warfare steal his car back?
I always assumed that military experts are straight laced. Yet here
you are, a philosophy major (which I didn’t know) who was thrown out of art school!
Now,
are you worried about the government reading these stories? Don’t they still pay you
for consulting? I know, for example, I have a nephew who makes maps for the Air Force and,
because he sees where classified bases are, he’s not allowed to get black-out drunk,
where he forgets what he did the night before (like you do, in some of these stories). I’d
watch what you put up here.
Thanks for writing so many interesting books. I love spy novels and your’s are, by far,
the best! It was nice to see you on Oprah and I can’t wait for the next book.
Oh, and
good luck with the IRS audit!”
– 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):
Every morning, I read a report of all the comments my website blocked because it considered the message spam and, every morning, I laugh loud enough to turn heads. Each message is a blatant product pitch, poorly disguised as real feedback on the site. Today, I think I received my favorite one yet:
great article, but there is so much more to know about toilet bowl cleaners
(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
I saw a poster of “The Proposal” at a bus stop today and assumed it was a spy thriller.
The Proposal
–versus–
A View To A Kill
Which movie is more likely to have a scene with a helicopter landing on a wedding?
PS, in my mind, I have combined the plots of two, above movies and created the greatest
summer blockbuster of all time (tenative title: “A View To A Dress”… I have also
written the tagline: “the groom is getting cold feet- load the ammo”).
As regular listeners of my radio show know, one of my favorite people in the world is the guy who acts like he has no idea what you are talking about when you use a slightly incorrect term:
“Hey, could you hand me that modem please?”
“what modem?”
“the one right in front of you.”
“I don’t see a modem”
“It’s on your desk.”
“oh, this? Are you talking about this?- This is a router”.
As such, I would like to introduce you to Elizabeth Beacton, a congressional staffer who, if you have not already been forwarded this article, starts one of the most hilarious email exchanges I have ever seen by combining that above (awesome) habit (of pretending to be confused) with the equally hilarious habit of losing your temper when some one uses a nickname:
SUGGESTION TO READERS: when some one fakes like they are confused to me, I like
to then pretend I don’t remember asking a question. I call it “doubling down on the
fake confusion” and it always forces them to admit they knew exactly what I was referring to:
“Hey, could you hand me that modem please?”
“what modem?”
“Oh my God. Have I been talking about modems again?”
“what??”
“I have no recollection of the last five minutes. Do you have any idea why I may have been talking to you about modems?”
(after defeated pause) “yeah… you meant ‘router’. I’m holding a router… …here, take it.”
…I know every one is sharing the story, but I love the detail that the ump called a cop to help him eject the fans, and that the cop disagreed with the ump, but still assisted. I did not realize that, in the hierarchy of uniformed authority figures, police report to umps. (But, some how that makes perfect sense to me).
Also, The Visitors Locker Room, my sports comedy podcast with CJ Sullivan, starts a new schedule this week: Mondays and Fridays at 3 PM. We also have some fun segments planned for this week and special guests. Lastly, expect a big update on our podcast, which has been out-of-synch for a few weeks (sorry).
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
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