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Since there was so much trouble over even having one this year, may as well make the effort to comment on the NFL season at least one more time.

Here in Cleveland, the Browns are the subject of a sorta-kinda quarterback controversy this week, at least among armchair quarterbacks. My man Seneca Wallace, fellow graduate of dear auld ISU, started on Sunday and showed some exciting flashes of athleticism before the whole team just kind of ran out of gas and Arizona completed a creeping comeback victory in overtime.

So right now we have a range of opinions just among the relatively small number of football pundits I keep up with. Peter King is on record strongly advocating that the Browns should stick with Colt McCoy, and focus on upgrading his supporting cast, as their best route to success. While a Canton reporter has suggested that, when you look at their records, Wallace has proven at least as effective as McCoy; combined with Wallace’s history with football czar Mike Holmgren, this could mean that Wallace starts in 2012, at least while yet another quarterback-of-the-future takes practice reps as his understudy.

Up here in Cleveland, though, one of the local hacks has declared today that Wallace and McCoy are both mediocre, and the Browns need to go back to the well for a savior at center yet again.

Personally, I don’t know; I find it more and more difficult to refute the “career back-up” label which more than one observer has applied to Colt McCoy. (more…)

Because, as Andrew Kerr observed pointedly in “As Good as We Get,” hand-outs are strictly for rich corporations.

Especially here in the Buckeye State, with said corporations essentially running the show through the Republican legislature and their (certainly not “our”) very pro-business governor, John Kasich. Earlier this year, there was already the ninety-three million dollar gift to American Greetings which had me steamed up.

And that’s almost chump change, now, with Johnny “dangling a $400 million package” in front of Sears in hopes of luring them here from Illinois (in the somewhat uncomfortable phrasing of the Plain Dealer‘s Henry Gomez). For the most part, there’s nothing new to say about this, really. Moreover, even for the purposes of a propaganda drill, I don’t need to say a whole lot because there were so many good quotes in the cleveland.com article.

First of all, let’s recognize that this isn’t unique to Ohio, of course. “Kimberly Freely, a Sears spokeswoman, confirmed last week that about one-third of the 50 U.S. states have submitted proposals to the company. Freely said the company does not comment on incentive deals.” Well, why should they; what is there they can really say about their parasitic extortion of money from a society in which the general public and the government have been nearly bled dry already. (more…)

Well, there goes the neighborhood.

I really do enjoy life here in this Lakewood, Ohio, this plot of land where I have hung my hat for nearly three years now. In fact within weeks of moving in I was cheerfully confessing to having become a Lakewood Snob; this is my own term, and I don’t think most of the area conceives of any snobbishness on the part of our community. But I certainly feel that there is cause.

This is what a comfortable, livable urban existence “for the rest of us” should be. Some claim that Lakewood is the most densely-populated city between New York and Chicago; I don’t know about that but I would say it’s certainly density done right. A population right around that of Ames including the schoolyear student population, in a compact 5.6 square mile lozenge-shaped parcel carved out of Cleveland’s west side.

Lakewood is density without feeling of crowding, other than say a popular eatery like Melt around mealtimes. Lakewood puts the lie to sprawl-dwelling reactionary fears that density must mean high-rise towers and feeling packed-in like sardines; in fact I think most of us here own a car and it’s easy to get around that way, probably in part because it isn’t necessary and many of us leave the car at home for errands within the city. You can walk most places because the city is compact, and the city can support so many services and amenities in such a small space because of population density, which is achieved without tower blocks through the simple expedient of using most of the available space. (more…)