Tribe Rewards and Bleacher Tales

The Cleveland Indians have rolled out a new program for season ticket holders called Tribe Rewards, which I am fully taking advantage of.

I have a partial plan in the bleachers, and I am included in the program. Basically, you get "points" for your ticket plan and for listening/watching away games and plugging in little codes. You can redeem these points for everything from bobbleheads to suites.

With my little plan and small amount of points, I thought for sure I would be stuck with nothing more than a pile of skateboard decks and C block ts. That is until I saw the option for Batting Practice on the field. I cashed out about half my points for this experience and I am madly scrambling for more points so I can do it again.

You and a guest get a couple of ts and then are escorted down on the field to watch the Tribe take some swings...that and Nick Swisher lining little kids up to do the O H I O. Sadly, no autographs for us that day, but there is something special about being down on the field. I highly recommend the adventure.

Speaking of adventures, I had a doozey in the Bleachers recently.

If you have never sat in the bleachers, the best way to describe it is remembering back to the days of being a kid on a field trip. Where did all the rowdy kids gravitate to? The back of the bus. The bleachers my friends, are the back of the bus.

While John Adams takes his perch at the top, the seats below are filled with a weird mix of families, drunks and miscreants. The bleachers are also quite like a reception, people dropping in and out, sitting where ever their butt lands.

After batting practice, my pop and I took our seats and watched a drunk hammered young man repeatedly get tossed out of somebody's seat. He was like that little cartoon cat...he just kept coming back.

Then, a loud couple sat behind us that clearly had a favorite word. Sometimes it was hyphened, but it was always present. Cursing, for the most part, doesn't bother me. I don't like it in front of kids or old people and I certainly don't like every other work screamed in my ear. It was so bad that I was contemplating how to get security involved when the guy behind me pushed me to the brink. I heard Popeye's voice in my head "That's all I can stands cause I can't stands no more."  I was wearing my Matt LaPorta jersey and the guy loudly proclaimed MATT LAPORTA SUCKS!

*sigh*

I turned around, giving the guy the evil eye just the way my grandma taught me, much to the delight of his girlfriend. "Ooooo...she heard you!" followed by "Hit him! Hit him."

The guy then tried to scooby doo backwards, "oh hey I didn't say nuthin" he muttered, waving his hands at me.

I said something to the effect of if he has an opinion fine stand behind it but I would prefer that he shut his pie hole.

The couple quieted down for the rest of the inning until they decided to stumble on for another Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Just another day at the ball park.

Book Club - Gone Girl

Even tough guy Henry Rollins reads.

I'm enjoying my book club of one. No Shiraz swilling friends forcing me to read books I have no desire to spend my time on. Nope, just me keeping a promise to myself - to read for fun - after the disaster known as "The House of the Seven Gables." I still shudder with hatred when I hear that title.

When I asked friends, followers and tweeps for a book suggestion, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl came up over and over and over.  Both men and women suggested it, so I figured it had to be worth a shot.

Oh my, what a shot it was.  This is the first book that I have read in a long time that is current. Many books are set in the past or in a timeless bubble that it fits into today or ten years from now.  This book is in current times, and with the endless news cycle of late, it could have been yoinked from today's headlines.

Gone Girl is about Nick and Amy, a couple that move from their perfect New York apartment and lives after a series of events most people can relate to these days; financial distress, job loss, and family illness, to Nick's hometown in small town Missouri. 

The morning of their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy disappears.

Did she leave her life behind for something else or was it something more sinister?

What happens next, we have all seen too often. Nick goes in front of the cameras searching for his wife  as the distraught husband, to the scorn of the public when the bright light of the media turns on him. The first section is Nick's narrative interwoven with excerpts from Amy's diary.

Two very different stories emerge.

There are so many twists and turns in the second half that I don't want to give anything away.

I was left rereading the last page, once, twice, a third time.

Wow.

Hop on over to your library or the internet and check it out.

After you read it, leave me a comment. I'm dying to talk about the last page :)

My Week With A Chevy Equinox

Shiny new Equinox in front of the Rock Hall. Woot.

I was approached by Chevy to test drive a few of their cars for a week each and then share my opinion. My current car is a 2003 Saturn Ion 3, which is the first car that I have owned with power windows. So, I of course took Chevy up on their offer.

I picked up the vehicle at Lavery Chevrolet in Alliance and was surprised to see the Equinox waiting for me. The Equinox is Chevy's stylish entry into the crossover market and with my previous comparison being my mom's Explorer, the Equinox was the winner.  

Sure, sure, the Equinox has a smooth, quiet ride but I loved the MyLink system most.

Chevy explains MyLink better than me -

MyLink works with your compatible smartphone and Bluetooth® wireless technology to stream content to its 7" diagonal high-resolution color-touch screen. Through voice commands or touch controls, tune into Pandora® or Stitcher SmartRadio™or listen to commercial-free programs through the three-month trial of SiriusXM Satellite Radio. You can also connect your music-loaded flash drive or MP3 player through the USB port^†. Gracenote® will even organize your music library by populating song information and album art.

In other words, I loaded some tunes onto a USB drive, plugged it in and then I was treated to a little Yaz blasting through the speakers. With the controls on the steering wheel, changing tunes or answering my cell was a breeze.

The rear view camera in action. No worries, I wasn't moving.

The Equinox has a rear view camera, which I have always maintained was for lazy wusses. That was until I was parallel parking downtown for a Tribe game. With a rear view camera, you still need to look around, don't be crazy, but it made parallel parking easy in a tight spot.  If you are too close there is also a warning alarm that dings at you before to crunch into something.

There are lots of storage and special features in the Equinox, including eco mode to save highway gas mileage, stabilitrak for driving in slick conditions and these amazing cup holders. Not only is there a little light in them, but they also hold most size cups. If you have ever put a diet coke or a water bottle in a cup holder only to take a turn and then have it splash all over the front seat, you understand my point.

To assist with blind spots, there are these great blind spot mirrors, which I greatly appreciated.

The Equinox gets 32 MPG on the highway and is chock full of safety features from six airbags, 4 anti-lock brakes, Forward Collision Alert, Lane Departure Warning and OnStar.

So what did I not like about the Equinox?

The only thing I disliked about the Equinox was the placement of the window controls. Each time I tried to roll the windows down, I hit the wrong button and rolled down the back windows instead of the front.

I give the Equinox an A and it has been added to my list of options when my Saturn dies and I go car shopping.

Have you driven an Equinox? Please share your opinions in the comment section.

Disclosure: Chevy gave me a shiny new Equinox to drive for a week and share my opinion with you all.  My words are all mine.

Internet Fun

 This past week has been traumatic and dramatic on the internet. Stories of kids that were bullied online and the committing suicide to the horror of the Boston bombers. We have all been buried in far too much information, drowning us with pictures, videos and presumptions.

When the real world gets to be too much, there are a few websites that you can click on to put life on the shelf for a couple of moments.

Des Hommes et des Chatons is a tumblr that very simply pictures handsome men with their cat counterparts.  Well worth a look, but a word of warning, there are a few naked male hineys. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Before VFX contains photos of blockbuster movie scenes with out the visual effects. It is hard to imagine a time that movies weren't full of stunning visuals. This site points out what is involved, which explains why movies take so friggin long to get to the screen.

Selfless Portraits is probably the most creative and collaborative random site that I know of.  Strangers from all over the world volunteer to recreate someone else's facebook profile pic. Some are hilariously funny and some are hilariously awful. All interesting and creative.

National Geographic Found features random pictures from all varieties and time periods from the National Geographic archives. I love the photographs from the 40s and 50s in particular.

Pictures of Hipsters Taking Pictures Of Food is just that. Hipsters trying to get the perfect shot of their noodle bowl.  Bonus points for a knit hat and fancy filter.

Texts From Dog has been around for awhile and there is even a book out. I thought about starting a Text From Cat, but my cats could really care less.

What are some of your favorite websites to hang out on?

Microsoft Store Sneak Peek

The banner covering the store front in Beachwood

I get invited to some pretty cool stuff, sometimes because I am a social media nerd, sometimes sheer luck. One of the lucky invites was Thursday night's sneak peak at the Microsoft store in Beachwood. Trust me when I say that the irony is not lost on me as I click away on my MacBook.

The first dig into computers I had was a Radio Shack TRS-80. If you used one you know that it didn't even have a floppy disk yet. No my friends, it had a cassette deck.

My first home computer was an Apple IIe, which had a teeny fraction of the power of my cell phone. THAT had a dual giant floppy disk drive. I then went to a Macintosh Classic - those are the ones that were all one piece that hipsters now turn into fish tanks. I have been a Mac kid ever since. I have a pile of shuffles (damn things are tiny), several different models of iPod.

But...

I own a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 tablet and I love it. I don't have an iPhone.

As much as I love my Apple products, it irritates me that they know it. If you go into an Apple store and, discounting the Genius Bar (those folks are great), the sales kids remind me of the Abercrombie staff. They look pretty, but don't ask them a question.

Ouch. I know, I know. But the last laptop I bought I only purchased from Apple because of my own research. I remember asking the sales kid to sell it to me and she lifted her waif hand and pointed and said, "it is a Mac, and you know it is really awesome and you can listen to iTunes and stuff."

It made my head hurt typing that.

Lots of people looking at lots of flashy stuff

That takes us to the Microsoft store. When I walked in it reminded me of some hybrid of an Apple store and a TGIFridays. Like an Apple store, it was crisp and clean. The lighting was bright and everything was neatly in its place. The difference was in the people. They were excited, maybe a little too excited for my taste, but still, they were happy to be there.

It was obvious that the staff had undergone some sort of customer service program. Everyone greeted me by name (yes, I had a name tag on, but somehow people forget that) and was amazingly helpful and most importantly - knowledgeable.

Cavs coach Byron Scott chatted with us

Cavaliers' coach Byron Scott was in attendance, chatting with the fans, taking a little Q and A. On a side note, I really liked Scott and I hope he stays.  Ahem...

All in all, it was a great event. The staff was fired up beginning to end, and I have to believe they were chugging a five hour-energy laced red bull concoction in the back room to keep the energy up.

I know the Surface is their big push for a tablet, and I'm sorry to say it isn't for me. Windows 8 made my head hurt with all the flipping tiles. Same reason I chucked flip board, I want to be connected when I want to. I don't want the constant reminder of my cousin and her star trek cronies waving from my facebook feed. Yuck.

The laptops however, might actually be a consideration for me. Except for that darn Windows 8. I really, really disliked the tiles.

Give the store a visit, if only to see the employees. They are what impressed me the most that night.

Book Club - The Whore of Akron

I have had several offers over the years to join book clubs with friends and I always turn them down. I politely declined the invitations because I'm protective of my free time and after spending my formative years being told what to read, I want to read what interests me. I have sat through too many happy hours or brunches with friends griping about the crummy book that they are reading for their club.

In the immortal words of one Ms. Sweet Brown, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

With my new Samsung tablet in hand, I'm starting my own book club. Oprah need not worry, since my club has only one member - me. As I finish a book, I'll share my thoughts about it and maybe encourage you to read something different.

It seemed appropriate to start with a book that no book club would touch - Scott Raab's The Whore Of Akron: One Man's Search For The Soul of LeBron James.  I downloaded the book for my trip to Goodyear for Tribe spring training. It was the only Cleveland story available at my local library for download, and I felt it was time that I read it.

If you have read my blog for any period of time or follow me on twitter, it will become quite clear to you that I am less than fond of the one that I refer to as LeFoolio. Let me say, I ain't got nuthin on Scot Raab.

Raab is a native Clevelander that wears Cleveland sports misery on his very soul. He is proud of his Chief Wahoo tattoo and carries his 1964 Browns championship ticket stub like a badge of honor. To outsiders, he is trapped in the downward of spiral of sports fanaticism. To Clevelanders, he sounds about right.

The Whore of Akron reads somewhere between a painfully stark look into Raab's life of addiction and family drama and an Enquirer styled biography of James.  His anger towards James, the man that ripped a championship out of the grasp of Clevelanders, is difficult to read. Through Raab's alternating thoughts of a career-ending injury to James and his desire that his son never inherits his fanaticism, he reflects back to the reader what sports means to Cleveland. Especially for those that remember what a winning team is. There is an entire generation of fans that only know the Kardiac Kids as an ironic hipster t-shirt.

I just threw up a little typing that last sentence.

If another Cleveland team won a championship, I don't think this book would have mattered. But, we haven't and it may or may not have been James' fault. Maybe if we were a city of winners, it wouldn't matter so much that James never loved us like we loved him.

The one thing for certain I can tell you, if you ever wonder whether or not sports matter, I would say that it a responding yes.

Recommendation: Required reading for Cleveland sports fans or those that want to understand them.

Cupcakes Destroyed By Reality TV

 How is that for a headline?

This past week, a baker that was featured on TLC's Next Great Baker closed her shop in Vermont, claiming that her business to a nose dive after she appeared on the show. She went on to complain that the network portrayed her in a negative light and her reputation was shot to all heck.

As Heather B. from The Real World New York pointed out years ago, all the editing in the world can't create create a character out of nothing. The editors can only work with what you give them.

The cranky cup cake creator was caught during the season cranking up the ovens of competitors and stealing sheet pans and the fans of the show took their displeasure out of her shop. Turns out people don't like cheaters. The shady baker made her situation worse when she gleefully told the home audience what she did, claiming all is fair in competition.

When the sugar hit the fan, customers walked right by her shop and into her competitors. 

The Real Real World cast from New York.

More than 20 years ago, a ground breaking show called The Real World pushed videos out of MTV's line up. The premise was 7 strangers moved in together and had their lives taped. It was a peek into 7 very different lives, and seemed very real. Now, well, now because of programs like the Real World, everyone on a reality program has a motive. There is no question if you have any desire for fame, reality tv is the way to go.

But my friends, reality tv is not for the faint of heart. If you are going to open your world to all of tv land in the hopes of fame and fortune, you have to take the good with the bad. There are days that each of us are doom and gloom instead of rainbows and kittens. Personally, I prefer to keep my crabby days to myself.

So while it is sad that someone lost their business and people lost their jobs in part because of a tv show, my faith in humanity is restored.

Nice to see a little karma in action.