“For God's sakes, Lemon. We'd all like to flee to the Cleve and club-hop down at the Flats and have lunch with Little Richard, but we fight those urges because we have responsibilities.” - Jack Donaghy, 30 Rock
At this point in the travelogue, I’m going to admit something to you because we’re very good friends…
I love Cleveland.
I don’t know what it is, but every time I go to Cleveland I have a simply marvelous time. Perhaps I relate to the city’s spunky, underdog spirit. Maybe it’s the fact that when you order a large coffee in Cleveland, your barista tries to straight-up murder you with an inhuman volume of hot brown liquid. And speaking of hot brown liquid, they named their team “The Browns”! And stuck with it, even when they had a chance to rename the team after that sack of dicks Art Modell skipped town in the middle of the night. The Browns! That shit is hilarious! Cleveland truly does, as the rock and rollers say, rock.
So it was an absolute pleasure to have the second leg of my cross country journey land me in the big Cleve. I was especially excited to visit with my longtime pal Hogg. Despite being a comic genius of the most deviant order, Hogg has one of those ‘adult’ jobs that would frown on being associated with my shenanigans so I will not reveal his real name nor show pictures of his face in this travelogue. Instead, he will be visually represented by the image of Burgermeister Meisterburger, the main antagonist in Rankin/Bass’ Santa Claus is Coming to Town:
As luck would have it, I arrived in Ohio just in time to accompany Hogg and his family to his daughter’s middle school band concert. Because as Jack Kerouac wrote: “No cross-country romp is complete without hitting a motherfucking middle school band concert, maaaaaan! Dylan will never go electric!”
One of the strange little quirks of my personality is that ‘normal situations’ weird me out a little. Whenever I’m in a position where there is a certain amount of social pressure to behave like a regular human being, my mind immediately spins toward the most abnormal and bizarre things that could be said or done to devolve the whole thing into some sort of grotesque Monty Python sketch. The more serious or buttoned-up situation, the stronger my urge to inject some chaos into it. Church, weddings, funerals - my brain comes alive with “What awful, monstrous thing could the priest say to turn this whole affair into a shitshow?” Then, as I imagine the horrible things, I start laughing to myself. Trying not to actually ruin anything, I start stifling the laughter which of course draws the attention of my fellow onlookers who don’t understand why someone would be snorting and chortling during a funeral. Now I’m the villain and I didn’t even get the satisfaction of ruining anything. Welcome to my hell.
Annnnnnyway, a middle school band concert in suburban Ohio definitely qualifies as a ‘normal’ situation. So as the sweet midwestern band director Mrs. Parkinson spoke on the mic about bake sales and music books, I couldn’t stop imagining her making inappropriate commentary between pieces. To be clear, these likely won’t be funny to you because you weren’t there. The comedy was happening completely in my mind. But I feel I need to share them with you because we’re such good friends.
As the seventh grade band finished up and made way for the eighth grade band, I imagined Mrs. Parkinson turning to the mic and saying “Okay - enough fucking around. It’s time for the eighth graders!”
When she was introducing the next song, she said “This is a particularly challenging piece for the tubas” which I imagined her continuing “... and I’m going to be honest: they were being real pussies about it.”
Finally, she asked all the members of the jazz band to stand up and I came this close to standing up and taking a small bow. I did not follow through with this urge because Hogg has to maintain his full-time disguise as an adult in this community and now I’m “mature” or some shit like that. The confused look on these parents’ faces would have been fucking hilarious though, right?
After the tragic non-debacle of the middle school band concert, Hogg and I were joined for this leg of the road trip by another childhood friend Madden!
Look at that handsome devil! Indeed, the boys were back in town! Ironically, our first stop was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame where Thin Lizzy still have NOT been inducted. The lack of respect for this seminal band is a snub that Andy Richter noted several decades ago on Conan:
If you haven’t been to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, it’s actually pretty fun! I mean, it’s not the most ‘rock and roll’ place on earth. We celebrate genius addicts who trashed hotels by not being allowed to walk around with a cup of coffee. But if you can turn off your inner jaded Gen Xer, it does remind you of how much you love rock music. I mean, if you do love rock music. Which I do!
And of course you can’t (or at least I can’t) visit Cleveland without eating like a total asshole. It was a meat and cheese bonanza. We were so cholesterol-drunk that things got a little out of hand at a local BBQ spot:
Sadly, our trip to the big Cleve had to end. As we left Hogg to his shame, Madden and I had more debauchery ahead. We were headed to Vegas!
Boogie Writes is a completely independent endeavor by one hard-working funnyman trying to make his way in the world today (which takes everything you’ve got.) If you like what you read, please subscribe, support, and tell a friend! Also - do you need advice? Of course you do! Send your queries to brendan@brendanboogie.com with “Dear Boogie” in the subject and get some solid or at least passable advice!