Local radio, and Joe Banner love with Joe Lull – WFNY Podcast – 2014-09-17
September 17, 2014Joe Banner discusses Brian Hoyer and trading Trent Richardson
September 18, 2014Good morning, Cleveland and Clevelandphiles! I hope all of you in The Land have a wonderful Thursday.
So. You’re aware of Cavs Zine, yes? The Bible of Cavs Fandom? Of course, of course. No doubt you’ve heard that, for our fifth zine, we’re taking it up a notch and 3D printing championship rings.
Hubris? Perhaps. But not for nothing, this is the first time we’ll have a Cavs Zine in which LeBron James is employed by the Cavaliers. We’re pretty excited and clearly have not taken any lessons from Cleveland sports history to heart.
In order to pay for these rings (and really, to up our distribution), we turned to Kickstarter for crowdfunding, a first for any Cavs Zine. We set a goal of five thousand dollars, which would pay for 300 championship rings and 5,000 copies of the zine (ten times more than any previous printing).
After two days, how close are we to our goal of five grand? Well. At the time of this writing, donations stand at…
$5,421
That’s right, we met and surpassed our kickstarter goal in less than two days! TWO DAYS. You people are insane. Seriously, a couple of you even gave your own money in order to go disc golfing with me. Insane.
Speaking of…
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I moved out to the Lakewood this summer and that means I had to find new courses to lose my discs. The Westside doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of disc golf courses. There’s nothing as nice as Sims, Roscoe Ewing, or Hudson Springs Park out here.
In terms of distance, Bay Village’s Cahoon Creek is the closest, followed by the course on the campus of Baldwin-Wallace, but neither of these offer a full 18. Plus, the courses aren’t worth your time. Cahoon Creek is just nine (short, poorly designed) holes and while BW clocks in at sixteen holes, you spend your entire time on the course trying literally throw around buildings and, more problematic, students.
There’s been a few times this summer that I’ve made the nearly hour drive west to play Great Blue Heron in Norwalk, a monster of a course with twenty-four fairly challenging holes. Blue Heron has multiple tee pads, multiple tee positions and the course gives you multiple opportunities to chuck your disc in their beautiful lake.
However, despite all it has going for it, playing Blue Heron is an event. I gotta plan ahead in order to play twenty-four holes in Norwalk. For my casual disc golf needs, the course located at Tri-C’s West Campus has been perfect. There are no tee pads (which could become an issue as the weather turns) and the hole signs are hand drawn, but the course is a full 18 and the holes are all challenging. Be prepared for a hike, as the course walks you around the entire campus but, unlike Baldwin-Wallace, you’re rarely throwing through student traffic.
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Did you know that the waters of Lake Erie have healing and restorative properties? No? Well, how do you explain this:
Forget his new $200 shoes, check out LeBron’s new hair! | View Best Twitter responses: http://t.co/a8Z11j6Bit pic.twitter.com/9TrPbPHaWj
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) September 17, 2014
Not sure how I feel about LeBron magically growing his hair back. One one hand, this means LeBron’s headband should return to normal headband sizes. Which is good. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’m glad he didn’t go full-Boozer.
But man, I wanted LeBron to go the other way and fully embrace his baldness. We haven’t had a balding superstar since Kareem. Both Jordan and Kobe preemptively shaved their heads to combat their hair loss, but that’s not an option for LeBron at this point. A clean shaven LeBron would just be too weird.
But LeBron with old-man hair and no headband? Yes, please. Plus, since he’s not changing his number, a receded hairline and a cul-de-sac dome would make it easier to identify pre-2010 pics from post-2014 pics.
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The Indians’ starting pitching scares me. I’m not sure what to make of it.
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I tend to read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi books, both for pleasure and for my job (I’m a librarian, gotta stay up to date). For those of you tend towards the Game of Thrones section of the book store, I can’t recommend enough Daniel Abraham’s Dagger and the Coin series, a medieval-esque fantasy which incorporates economics into the story (which, if you’re familiar with the genre, is quite rare). I’m a sucker for this stuff, but Abraham is a pro and the story is tightly written with no fluff (which, again, if you’re familiar with the genre, is quite rare).
On the other hand, Kameron Hurley’s Mirror Empire is nothing like the standard sword+quest+medieval Europe fantasy. Mirror Empire is the “it” book in sci-fi and fantasy circles and, after plowing through roughly 600 pages in little over two days, I can understand why. It is great and nothing like anything else I’ve read.
The book I’m currently reading is much less dorky, but much more nerdy. In Virtual Unreality, author Charles Seife discusses how information, especially bad information, spreads in our digital world. I find this stuff super interesting. I don’t think our generation full appreciates how much of a game changer the internet really is.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Seife’s new book, “Virtual Unreality,” is about how digital untruths spread like contagion across our laptops and smartphones. The author is unusually qualified to write on this subject, and not merely because his surname is nearly an anagram for “selfie.”
A professor of journalism at New York University, Mr. Seife is a battle-scarred veteran of the new info wars. When Wired magazine wanted to investigate the ethical lapses of its contributor Jonah Lehrer, for example, it turned to Mr. Seife, whose report pinned Mr. Lehrer, wriggling, to the plagiarism specimen board.
Cleveland fans should have a lot of experience in this area, given our summer full of shirtless trainer twitter reporters and online plane tracking software.
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If you like instrumental rock and dance music, I’ve really been enjoying local band Broccoli Samurai. I caught them at Werkout and was immediately smitten when I saw one of their members rocking a Kyrie jersey. Done. I’m all in. When they aren’t melting your face, they’ll do fun stuff like cover the Trailer Park Boys theme.
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My cousin the math teacher shared this video on Facebook and I gotta say, it be way more fun that “Weird Things All Couples Fight About” video that refuses to leave my feed.
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That’s all from me, folks. Ushering you into this beautiful Thursday morning has been my pleasure. Oh, and don’t forget to swing by here—only eight of ten remaining!
11 Comments
“I moved out to the Lakewood this summer…”
That was your first mistake, sir. #Eastside
You’re home, LeBron. You can relax and let it shine.
“The Westside doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of disc golf courses.”
Proves right there why the Westside of Cleveland is better. We don’t need hippie-yuppy invented pretend sport games 🙂
“The westside is better because we’d rather eat kielbasa then participate in physical activities.” – Paraphrased, of course 🙂
C’mon LeBron!
Rock that Granville Waiters hair-do proudly!
Disc golf = physical activity for Eastsiders. Hehe.
And, are you saying there is something wrong with kielbasa, pierogies, and saurkraut all put on a pretzel roll with Bertman’s over the top?
Not saying anything is wrong with that at all, in fact it’s delicious. But If I don’t move around a bit after I eat all of that…
And I’ve never actually played disc golf before, I just felt like poking some fun at the west side.
(not sure why all the copies of the pics, sorry mods.)
and I the Westside-grown counterpart. it’s all in good fun. thanks for playing along 🙂
I suddenly feel the urge to head out to the Buckeye Beer Engine.
Holy Carp! I just referenced Granville to a friend yesterday as the single biggest influence on Jordan shaving
his head to combat baldness.
Really nice to see some book recommendations in my preferred genre :).