Perspective Explains Everything

So let me get this straight. They hate us for our freedom and the best way to get back at them is to take some freedom away?

Now that we’re clear, please continue.

We’re fighting wars for freedom but freedom isn’t really a good idea in all cases. Which part of freedom am I missing? Is it the freedom of private property owners? The freedom of speech? Surely not the freedom of religion?

Remember when religion preached tolerance? Does anyone remember nuance?

It can be frightening to learn what other people think. But it’s even scarier to discover when other people don’t think. Don’t you think?

You most likely don’t think.

It really doesn’t matter your belief system. You have little desire to consider any opinion contrary to your own. If you are a modern American – especially if you are a modern American who holds strong political views – you know that you are right.

The other people are wrong. Those people! Those bastards. Sons o’ bitches!

Infidels!

I hate them, don’t you?

The television looked at me like she hated me. I hadn’t turned her on in days. You know how it is when you haven’t turned your lover on in days. Things get tense.

I looked at the television and I told the truth: there’s nothing there that interests me anymore except for sports and news. And that was the same reality that was around 40 years ago. All the cosmetic surgery the television has gotten since then has just made her look cheap. She was special when her basics were what was beautiful.

In fact, she was sexy because she existed.

Plus, I really loved her old knobs.

I enjoyed twisting her knobs and hearing her volume go up. Sometimes, I’d make her tint turn red. Yes, that was the innocent joy of discovery. One year, she went from black-and-white to color. That was her last great improvement of adolescence. Since then, there’s been lots of makeup and surgery.

Now, she claims I need her special features to be happy. She said the plastic surgeon added high definition. But when I can’t make her volume go up, she tells me to replace the batteries.

She demands that I read her manual or she just won’t perform. Lately, she’s been telling me she only really looks good if I wear special glasses. “It gives me another dimension,” she says.

Yes, I agree. The dimension of shallow.

It is the summer of our discontent. This has been falling apart for some time, but it really peaked when the television convinced me to try to watch soccer this year because she knows I like all sports with a big stage. Put an Olympic Gold medal on the line, and I will watch curling.

But when the World Cup started, I thought my television was broken. She screamed during every soccer game. She didn’t do it on any other channel. But I wanted to watch soccer.

She later told me that there was a horn called the vuvuzela that was the problem, not her. By the time I discovered she was telling the truth, she told me I had to meet somone named Snooki. Continue reading »

I am a lucky American. I just landed a job sharpening pencils. I beat up 100 people in line to get the job. I mean I beat them out for the job.

It’s entry level but I think if I work really hard and learn all the systems involved, I can rise into sales. Yes, I am hoping to move up in the corporation and be like my new friend and boss, Sally the pencil seller. She knows people, and not just any people. Sally knows people who use pencils. That’s huge!

That’s why I am not in sales. I don’t know people who use pencils. And if I did, I’d figure they already have pencils so I’d be polite and leave them alone. But now that I’ve joined a corporation with a real mission statement – “Pencils for Sale” – I have to throw everything I know out the window. I have to learn to think again – with my mind this time.

My brain already hurts.

Thinking is so much easier when it is done by other people, and so is work. I hope to get into management someday.

But now my life consists of sharpening pencils in a way that Sally’s customers like.

“Sharp!” she says.

I try my best. But here on the factory floor, I’ll admit I’m thinking of unionizing. I figure if we unite together, we can fight the man, Sally.

Don’t get me wrong. I like my job. But the problem with the Corporation are the cliques. There’s Sally, and there’s me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get into Sally’s clique. Those people think they are better than us.

On the other hand, this is a pretty good company to work for. I mean, I have security, right Sally? Sally? Sally?

So yeah, I’m looking for a job. I might have references.

Twenty eight years ago as I was preparing to leave Cleveland for Cape Cod, I gathered my  parents together in the living room for an hour-long argument that I dubbed “The Decision.”

“This summer, I’m taking my talents to Old Silver Beach,” I announced.

“What talents?” asked my father. My parents had other questions as well. They asked,  “Who wants to leave Cleveland to live near a beach? Isn’t $120 million good enough for you? How about if we fire the coach?”

It was an awkward discussion. Finally I turned to my brother, who had the family nickname of Jim Gray, and I gave him a dollar to ask me questions instead of my parents. He asked me if I bit my nails.

So I gassed up the car that my parents bought me, and I’ve been here ever since. I love the warm weather, but I hate the heat.

Sources have told Freecheezeburgerz that Lebron James plans to be a free agent after every NBA game next season. The press conference sheduled for 9 pm on July 8 is merely to announce where he plans to play his first game next season.

The ultimate sports free agent, Lebron James, is making the ultimate free agent play, said sources close to the situation.

Sources have confirmed that Lebron plans a one-hour television special after each game next year. Teams will be allowed to call in and bid on Lebron’s services for the next game as if they were bidding on a pink flamingo lawn ornament in a Jerry Lewis telethon, said sources.

Lebron is said by sources to be considering making January “Lebron Idol” month, in which general managers must perform Jay Z songs while tossing chalk in the air in order to win his services for the next game. According to sources, he is also in talks with Donald Trump for an “Apprentice” spinoff in which celebrities such as Joan Rivers get to be his point guard for a night.

Informed sources say Lebron is planning to donate all of the money raised during these 82 television shows to the “Ernest Byner Fund,” a charity that mends the broken hearts of Northeastern Ohio with alcohol.

Sources confirmed that proceeds from the expected ratings bonanza of the season ending special episodes that will be called “Bidding For Lebron Game-By-Game Through The Playoffs” will go into a special Nike account to help pay Asian factory workers an actual living wage.

So I’m walking a Cape Cod beach and singing “Drill Baby Drill!” because the tune is so catchy and such a summertime feel-good song. I’m trying to remember if it was by Jimmy Buffett or The Beach Boys when suddenly it hits me. I remember that magical summer two years ago.

It was at a large Woodstock-like concert, or maybe a revival meeting. The band, Sarah and the Tea Party, were putting out a percussive groove as if it was Mick and the Stones going off on “Sympathy For The Devil.” They rocked – such soul. “Drill Baby Drill!” It had a Gospel twinge too.

And now as the gentle ocean waves of the Atlantic slow down the groove in my head, I find myself wondering whatever happened to that band and whether they ever got their wish to drill like a baby, or did they want a baby to drill, or was it to drill as if a baby planned the whole thing? Pop music has so many mixed messages, and something like this clearly needs a “Parental Advisory” sticker so you know what to do with the baby. Meanwhile, I just keep singing that addictive tune. “Drill Baby Drill!”

Good times. Gosh, I can remember it like it was two years ago.

Music takes you back, doesn’t it? Back then, as best as I can remember, that Sarah lady hung out with some old guy who wanted to join her band but her band-mates scorned him as not old-fashioned enough. I guess she wrote a book about the band tour, which was enormously successful after charting only one hit.

And yet I can’t get the song out of my head. So I am here staring at the beautiful ocean, trying to figure out what it all means. Maybe I should play the record backwards.

I am a witness… to Bill Belichick and Manny Ramirez as heroes in Boston. What is it like to be a Cleveland fan in New England? It’s complicated, and very lonely.

“What’s up with the hat?” I get that a lot around here.

When the Cleveland Cavaliers play the Boston Celtics in the NBA Eastern Conference semi-finals, I will again be exposed to tired Cleveland jokes but that is only one price I pay for being a Cleveland sports fan living in Massachusetts – a place that can only be be described as a wicked arrogant state of fandom. Wicked arrogant. When I first moved here, I knew a guy who was best friends with a guy named “Sully.” Back then, the fans around here weren’t so wicked arrogant. They had no right to be. They were haunted by ghosts. I felt kinship. But I’ve been here a long time.

During the 2007 American League Championship Series, in which my Cleveland Indians were up 3-1 on my friends-and-family’s Boston Red Sox and then lost three straight stupid baseball games, I was with my girlfriend when a knucklehead asked me, “What’s up with the hat?” My girlfriend has learned to laugh along… or is that a mask for laughing at me? I am from Cleveland; pardon the inferiority complex.

Another time, I walked into a convenience store to buy a newspaper when the clerk saw my hat and said, “Cleveland Browns? I never heard of such a thing.” So I asked, “you never heard of the Cleveland Browns?” Continue reading »

The 2010 NFL draft consists of geniuses with agendas, and the duped. This is meant to be mocked. Most mock drafts mean “I pretend.” This mock draft is more of the “I ridicule” type.

1)St. Louis Rams – Rush Limbaugh. The Rams run confidently right and backwards, but the pain pills are so awesome you won’t even know it’s backwards.
2)Detroit Lions – Akio Toyoda. Barry Sanders could mainline a vial of Fountain of Youth Juice (available at GNC) and team up with the test-tube grown DNA of Bobby Layne and it still wouldn’t be as satisfying as seeing Toyoda with that gas pedal in his mouth at every home game.
3)Tampa Bay Buccaneers – Tiger Woods. You’ll thank him for the topless cheerleaders. Plus this team is used to playing under par.
4)Washington Redskins – George Washington. Two years from now, Daniel Snyder will fire him for underachieving.
5)Kansas City Chiefs – Bob Dole. He brings Viagra politics to football. Rise up, and then lose!
6)Seattle Seahawks – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Lewis and Clark, who are dead, have as good of a chance of discovering the End Zone as any living Seahawk. Continue reading »

DO YOU WANT TO BUY A TOYOTA?

This is a 90-second sitcom about American commerce, a magic newsstand, and a persnickety customer.

In today’s episode, our hero explains why he is a loyal customer of Toyota.

–DO YOU WANT TO BUY A TOYOTA?–

Once Super Bowl XLIV ends, like a left turn on the first lap of the Daytona 500, the American sports world will quickly turn its attention to endeavors past the NFL.

With the speed of an Olympic downhill skier or an NHL slapshot, the attention of the fan will leap like any NBA player dunking on a fast break, or one of three WNBA players who might dunk; while the non-stop hype of March Madness, baseball spring training, Manny Pacquiao’s next victim in the ring, or any random scandal that may appear at any time can take up valuable cranium space that could otherwise be used to follow the curling, billiards, bowling, motorcycle racing, horse racing, or pig racing like I once saw at the county fair.

Football is simple. It happens every Sunday in the fall – once a week and it ends in a spectacle that we all celebrate as if one of our national heroes is being commemorated. This weekend, it’s Peyton Manning. Are you even paying attention?

Wait! Before you change the channel, watch this show!