Being A Non-Prince In Cleveland Never Felt So Good

What the hell.

I'm watching and reading all the news about Isaac the next big hurricane. Count on it: Every year just around the time football is revving up, there's a news story showing empty shopping market shelves, cars lined up at gas pumps, people boarding up houses, and always the same middle-aged, tanned, guy-who-stepped-out-of-a-Jimmy-Buffett-song talking about riding the storm out and he survived that big one twelve years ago, and four years ago, and by God and whiskey he's gonna survive this one. And every year as I watch all this in Cleveland, where maybe it gets a little too hot, or maybe a little too cold, or maybe there's too much snow for a couple days, I think, how can those people stand it? How can they live there where every year for two or three months they have to live with the imminent possibility of boarding up, packing up, fleeing, losing it all? Don't they ever consider moving, for the mental health benefits, if nothing else? But for the first time last night--call it wisdom with age, maybe--as I watched and listened to Jimmy Buffett guy, I actually stood--if not walked a mile--in his flip flops for a second or two and thought, does he watch ESPN and read the sports pages, and does he ever consider the fans of Cleveland sports teams (the Indians, who've won maybe five games in the last month, or the Browns, who've won no more than five games in a season for just about a generation, and whose fans--two weeks before this season even starts--are already calling sports talk shows and speculating about who the next coach will be and who should be the number one pick in next year's draft) and think to himself, as he places another big piece of ply board over another window, just like he did last month or last year: God, how can those fans in Cleveland stand it year after year--bungling, no-hope teams filled with cast-offs and suspect prospects and chronically injured never weres? Don't they ever consider moving, for the mental health benefits, if nothing else?

And then I flick from The Weather Channel to E!, turn from the front page to the gossip page, and I consider the naked truth about being a globetrotting, whore mongering prince in this day and age. Time was, and was and was, the naked truth about being a globetrotting, whore mongering prince was, no lie, about as good as it could get. For decades, centuries, millennia, princes have had the run of the world's pleasures. Whatever and whomever they wanted to indulge, plunder, pinch, imbibe, was theirs, usually not even for the asking. Royal privilege. And as for word of any indiscretions getting out and round the kingdom, forget it. The four magical, royal words--Off with his head--sufficed to keep a lid on things, so to speak. But now? Oh Lord, randy Prince Harry must be cursing his fate, and thousands and thousands of lascivious ancestors, that his royal playtime comes not just in the world of fiendish paparazzi and cable TV--his poor mother knew all that--but in a world where everybody carries a camera/video recorder. Should we be shocked that a charming prince is rompingly exercising his birthright's pleasures in his royal birthday suit (sorry, but all the crown jewel jokes have been taken) with naked commoners in history's latest Sin City? Hardly. I mean, come on, for a prince like Harry, those not cognizant of history (royals debauching themselves on a royal level) are condemned not to get any. Given the photos available, we might be shocked only at his modesty. But does the guy get a break? Does the world just shrug its common shoulders and say, princes will be princes? Not in this day and age, Harry. Sorry.

And so, today I'm recalculating my dreams. Out is the one about being the Prince of New Orleans, celebrating another Super Bowl victory in the buff with a dozen or score of my drunkest friends. In is the one where it's less than 85 degrees the next time I have to mow the lawn, the Browns and Indians finish .500, and Prince finally puts out another decent album.

What the hell, Cleveland, you're all right.

This Is Misery?

I've been thinking more about the Forbes magazine people putting Cleveland at the top of their list for most miserable U.S. cities. My initial gut reaction is to say that after years of hawking magazines, I haven't seen a whole lot of people buying Forbes, and those who do seem to me to be about the most miserable lot this side of those who buy All About Beer magazine (let's face it, if you have to read about beer, you're missing the point by a mile). My next thought is good, let outsiders think Cleveland is so miserable. That way they stay away and leave all of us here with enough elbow room to enjoy all the great things about the place.

Turns out the "misery index" these Forbes nabobs used included such trite, been-there-done-that items as crime, government corruption, housing foreclosures, unemployment, etc. Significant issues, sure, but hardly the be all and end all of daily life in the used-to-be-quite-big-but-dwindling-yearly city of Cleveland. So I started compiling my own anti-misery index, a list of various amenities that make living quite nice and serve as quite a powerful antidote, especially when considered en masse, to any perceived misery lurking in the environs.
A small but significant sampling of my anti-misery list (a list I'm sure any sentient person would agree is pretty universal and one in which Cleveland scores pretty high across the board, I might add) should go a long way to convincing the Cleveland put-downers they wouldn't know a knackwurst from a bratwurst if one or the other gave them gas for a week. See how many of the questions posed below your city can honestly answer a resounding YES to, as Cleveland easily does each and every one.

• Can you find five bars within a ten minute drive where they serve Guinness on tap and know how to pour one?
• Does a good percentage of the population know what a pierogi is?
• Can you get a good pierogi within a fifteen minute drive?
• Within ten minutes can you drive your landlord to the emergency room at dawn on a Sunday and be welcomed by the staff of the Cleveland Clinic, one of the greatest hospitals in the world, as I did this morning?
• Does your community have its own year-round collective catharsis entity (aka Cleveland professional sports teams) that acts as universal scapegoat, whipping boy, and repository for everyone's private miseries?
• Can you get anywhere worth getting to in your metropolitan area within thirty minutes, regardless of the time of day or night?
• Are you basically free from any catastrophic natural disaster, other than a measly blizzard every once in a while (okay, including April, but what's a baseball home opener without snowballs to throw at the opposing bullpen?)?
• Do the vast majority of your licensed drivers actually know how to drive in snow?
• Does your city's collective inferiority complex help to lessen your own individual one (I mean, how many New Yorkers or Parisians probably beat themselves up all the time, thinking, "I'm not worthy of my city"? That doesn't happen in Cleveland.)?

Michael Stanley Band-This Town