Category Archives: Freak Speak

Freak Speak

LeBron’s Coming Home to Ohio/ The World’s Going Me-Oh-My-O

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Post #140 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Yo, bro. Been a long time since I posted. Been busy, but mostly lazy. Anyway I was all ready to write about the World Cup and how soccer is starting to look pretty cool when LeBron James made his big announcement that he’s going back to the Cleveland Cavaliers. I know I’m pretty young but this seems like one of the most amazing sports stories ever. I’ve heard all about athletes making the big play and winning the big game, but I never remember a story about the greatest player in the world actually wanting TO PLAY IN CLEVELAND.

Yes, yes, please don’t all you Dr. C haters be calling me out for being down on Cleveland. I’ve never been there, but I know they have some cool stuff. Like the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Clinic and a good art museum and symphony — I had to look up most of that stuff — but what they’re not really known for is being a DESTINATION.

“Yo, dude. Hear you got a few weeks off. You going somewhere?”
“Sure am, Jack.”
“So like where? New York, L.A., Florida, Yellowstone, maybe even Europe?”
“Heck no, man. I’m heading to Cleveland. There’s no town like Showtown. Time to p-a-h-t-y!”

No, I’ve never heard that kind of conversation either.

Let’s face it: Cleveland needs some love. Just type “Mistake by the Lake” in a search bar and see what shows up. The most famous thing I can remember happening there recently was that cretin who had those three girls imprisoned in his house for like ten years. Now there’s some reality TV nobody wanted to see. The city last had a championship in 1964 with the Cleveland Browns. That’s 60 years, folks. The people there need a boost.

So here comes LeBron James from Akron, who’s coming home after living in one the country’s greatest hot spots for the last four years. He feels HOME IN CLEVELAND. This guy could pick wherever he wanted to be — and I mean anywhere — and he picks Cleveland. How cool is that? It’s like Hoosiers, Rudy, the Olympic Ice Hockey Team that Beat Russia, The Bad News Bears, and The Little Engine That Could all rolled into one. (Maybe we could add in Dr. Seuss’s Horton: “A person’s a person no matter how tall.”) And that’s just from LeBron showing up. No telling how big the story will get if they start winning a championship or two.

If Cleveland were a stock, you’d be smart to invest in it, I think. They’re climbing the charts with a big bullet.

So congratulations, Cleveland. LeBron, I was all for San Antonio in the Finals last month — Dr. C usually roots for the underdog — but I gotta say you’re kind of my hero for making such a bold and sincere move. In a world that seems all about money and fame, you chose HOME.

From one of your new changed-his-mind admirers,
The Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

Joseph A. Bank must own a freakin’ bank to give the deals they offer.

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Post #139 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

I was watching the game the other night. NBA playoffs, of course. And they ran this ad from Joseph A. Bank. It’s a place we all see at malls. Seems like a nice enough store. And they had this ad — I’ll make this short — that said if you buy one suit from them, they’ll give you three more for FREE.

Huh?? Now I know these deals always say the other three suits can’t cost more than the first suit. So I spend — which I’d never do, of course, since why would I need four suits? Look at my picture and you’ll see why I say that — say, $250 for a suit and they give me three others for that same $250.

How can anyone stay in business doing deals like this? I never see car ads — and I see lots of them with not-so-bright types jumping around and acting silly — where they offer $500 or a thousand off or they say they have the best deal around, but I’ve never heard one single car dealer say, “Hey, all you dudes, if you buy one car from me, I’ll give you three more for free.” Nope, not one time. And I don’t see that kind of offer for houses either.

So what gives, Joseph A. Bank?
1) Either you are the most generous people that I’ve ever heard of, or
2) The other three suits are swimsuits, or
3) The other three suits are made of moth wings or fly spit (or some similarly cheap material), or
4) Anybody who buys four suits would probably buy a bunch of shirts and ties and socks and shoes and shoelaces and shoe polish and cufflinks and whatever else I’m leaving out and that would make up some of the difference, or
5) The suits cost you so little, say $50 each because they’re made by very poorly paid workers in Asia, that you can afford to give them away at four for $250. That would leave you at least a bit of profit. But hey, that’s still very little winnings, so the suits must cost maybe $35 or $40 to make, or
6) Since I’ve never really been inside a Joseph A. Bank, one suit could cost over $1000 and my reasoning from #4 is right, it’s just that the suits cost like $150 each to make.

So which is it, Mr. Joseph A. Bank? Or does anyone else know how they do it?

Just wondering.
From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

THE NBA IN 1956? YOU WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE IT!

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Post #138 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Well, even though they can stay on pretty late, I can’t get me enough of the NBA playoffs. Those guys are simply amazing. Everyone knows about LeBron and Kevin Durant but there are other very cool stories as well. Like Danny Green on San Antonio. Come the playoffs last year and this year, the guy’s on fire! Setting all kinds of records with tons of 3-pointers. But here’s the cool part. He didn’t even START in college. That’s right; he was sixth man at UNC. I remember because I live only about 5 miles from the UNC campus. So a guy who couldn’t be in the top five on his team in college is now going berserk from downtown (3-pt land) in the pros. That shows you sure shouldn’t ever give up, even if you can’t make the first string.

Anyway I decided to look up some history of the NBA. Don’t know why, but I looked up 1956. Oh, that was an interesting year. The Celtics beat the Hawks for the championship. The St. Louis Hawks! Hey, most of the teams we know now didn’t even exist back then. Here were the divisions with all their teams:
East Division
Boston Celtics
Syracuse Nationals
Philadelphia Warriors
New York Knicks

Western Division
St. Louis Hawks
Minneapolis Lakers
Fort Wayne Pistons
Rochester Royals

That’s right! There were only 8 teams in all and get this: 6 of them got to go to the playoffs. Only two were left out. Huh?? And they had teams in Syracuse, Fort Wayne, and Rochester! Not exactly huge cities nowadays. But I can’t believe they were that big even back then. I guess it shows there wasn’t a ton of interest in having an NBA team in your town. Too bad I wasn’t around. I could have started up a team no problem and no doubt made some nice coin over the years.

Anyway, then I decided to look up some salaries from back then. I mean right now, Kobe Bryant makes $30 million a year. And he didn’t even play this year. #2 is Dirk Nowitski at almost $23 million. #3 comes Amar’e Stoudemire, another guy who hardly played. (Where can I sign up for those jobs? I can’t play either and I’ll gladly take even half of that.) Even a low paid star — like Tim Duncan — gets $10 million. But back in 1956, Bob Cousy of the Celtics and Bob Pettit of the Hawks made the top salaries of $25,000 a year! Say what?? And yeah, I know about inflation, but that still wouldn’t come anywhere close to what even the lowest paid players on teams make now.

Man, there’s a lot out there I don’t know. Since I’m pretty sure I’ll never be a pro player in anything, maybe I should get more tuned into history. Seems pretty interesting.

Well, back to the playoffs. Go, San Antonio! I felt bad for them when they blew the finals against the Heat last year. Hey, give someone else a chance, LeBron.

Just sayin’.
From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

End-Of-Grade Tests Are a Big, Giant Mess

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Post #137 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Today, I’m kind of steamed, just like my picture at the left shows me. Hey, I know that’s not unusual, but it’s just that I actually like to learn stuff and sometimes that learning actually takes place at school. It really does. But not lately. Our math and English teachers keep giving us these practice tests for the EOG tests, (That’s End-of-Grade Tests, where they supposedly measure how much we’ve learned.) But we’re not learning anything from these practice tests except how to take the tests. Hey, I already know how to take the tests. Yeah, it might help some students. If they listened. But I don’t think they are.

Anyway, I put it all into a poem. I didn’t learn anything from the poem — me being the author and all — but maybe it’ll get my idea across better.

STOP MESSING WITH OUR TESTING
by Dr. Crankenfuss

It’s getting near that time of year
When schools try to measure our progress,
But the method they use just gives us the blues.
It’s not accurate; it’s really just dog mess.

What makes someone smart? What sets us apart?
They ought to give us some problems,
Then examine our thinking, be it amped or stinking,
And see if we’re able to solve them.

Instead they give us a multiple choice test,
They don’t even know if we’ve read it,
We can just have a fling, fill in anything,
And we’re sure to get partial credit.

What about assessing our creativity,
Or gauging our determination?
Spotting leadership ability,
Or skills in communication?

Schools know how important test results are,
How they affect our hopes and dreams,
So who do they put in charge of our future?
A bunch of grading machines.

These tests hurt kids; they get discouraged,
And then our schools can lose them.
If the tests are so great, why are we
The only country to use them?

We all want to learn, so please engage us,
Don’t just “teach to the test.”
If machines are to be our evaluators,
How can we achieve success?

From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

A GREAT HOCKEY IDEA THAT TURNED OUT TO BE BULL HOCKEY

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Post #136 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Oh, Dr. Crankenfuss was ready with a great sports idea yesterday. Yes, Dr. C was going to change the game of hockey forever–revolutionize it, you know–and everybody would know his name. But it turns out he was sadly mistaken and as a result, still very few people know his name. Oh, well. I’ve got lots of time left to come up with some earth-shaking ideas. (At least, I hope I do.) Anyway, here was the idea:

I figured a hockey team could hire the biggest sumo wrestler in the world, a guy like six hundred pounds or so, and they could make him the goalie. All he’d have to do is kind of crouch, or even sit, in front of the goal and he’d practically cover the whole thing up. The other team would be so ticked off, but there’s nothing they could do. You can’t score a goal through a 600 pound wall, can you? The result would be a complete shutout for the Crankenfuss-advised team and certain fame for Dr. Crankenfuss, just like that guy who invented Moneyball for the Oakland A’s. (He was played by Brad Pitt in the movie.)

I was already set to post this idea, send it off to Sports Illustrated and maybe the Nobel Prize Committee, when I did some internet research first. Aw, drats! The idea had already been thought of and shot down on several different forums. (Type “fat goalie rules” into your search bar and you’ll find the same discussions I did.) So here are the reasons my hockey idea turned into bull hockey:

1) Even if the idea did work, it would only work for one game. Once all the other teams saw the earth-sized guy stopping all those shots, every team in the league would sign up a similar type guy within a day or two. Nobody would ever score again and the league would shut down from lack of attendance. (To give myself some credit, I thought of this one on my own before I did any web research. The ones that follow I found on those forums.)

2) The hockey goal is 4 feet high and 6 feet long. Even a super huge guy couldn’t cover all that space up. There would be little spaces left open, like at the upper corners. And–I didn’t know this before–hockey players are so good, they could hit a lot of those little spaces. Now not all the time, but enough times to still score because a guy who weighed that much wouldn’t be the most agile dude around so flailing his arms wouldn’t stop a lot of the shots. (I found this amazing video on YouTube put on by “Sports Science” that proves this beyond a doubt. And it’s really funny too. I can’t believe only half a million people have seen it. It deserves more airplay than that.)

3)The are NHL limits on how big the pads can be on a goalie. That’s so they can’t wear five-foot wide pads and stop the puck that way. The trouble for our hypothetical sumo goalie would be that the pads would be way too small for his giant body. So most of his body wouldn’t have padding on it. So the other team would slapshot the puck over and over into the poor goalie’s body at 100 miles per hour or so. You know, to soften him up a bit. Youch! After ten minutes, he would have puck sized dents in him. Heck–and this is a scene I came up with all by myself–the puck would probably get lodged into his body and they’d have to call a time out to get a rescue squad in to get the puck out. It could be jammed like six or more inches into one of his fat rolls.

So even though my idea wasn’t as original as I thought, I still learned a bunch by researching about it. So I thought I’d pass the info along. And you got to see a very cool video as well.

From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
who’s always tried to exude
new ideas imbued
with goodness (you know, like health food),
Dr. Crankenfuss