Hello. Sorry, I guess that was a little bit of an awkward introduction. Whadda ya want. I’ve been dead for nine years, ya know. My writin might be a little rusty, if ya catch my drift.

So a few weeks back I get a message from some guy in New York telling me this Door Flew Out site wants to get my take on the Cleveland Browns of all things. I still get requests for this kind of thing all the time. Most of it I just shrug off, cause I’m dead and what use do I have for money anyway. An also, it’s not really my medium. I mean, yeah, I’m a writer, but I always focused on comics and collaborating with the greats. I really dug that aspect of the whole thing. R Crumb’s the guy everybody remembers, but there were a lot of other really great ones who showed up in American Splendor. Alan Moore. Alison Bechdel did a few issues. She came up with the Bedchel Test. And what’s more, I don’t really have much use for organized sports. Lotsa guys like watchin it to blow off steam, but it wasn’t ever my scene. But to those guys? To those guys it’s a real community. I guess for them if they see another guy wearing a team jacket or hat they think a little kinder of em. That’s all baloney though. I’ve seen Browns fans punching and kicking each other in the street. People forget that a lot of assholes can root for the same team. All being a Browns fan meant is that you’re probably from somewhere around Ohio. It don’t mean much.

But I don’t know. Maybe the request caught me when I was bored, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t get the idea of doing something creative out of my head. Plus he tells me there’s going to be all these other great writers involved in this series. Maybe I could meet some of ’em later. Heaven’s pretty big, ya know. Plus this guy tells me it doesn’t have to be about the Browns. He says me I could write about jazz, which a lotta people know is my true passion. That seemed pretty interesting. I started writing down the thoughts I had on the subject, but something funny happened. I started to get it in my head that none of this was going to work. What do the readers of some sports website care about jazz? I don’t know. Maybe some of ya are into it. I don’t wanna prejudge any of ya. But every time I get to writing my thoughts down, I started tellin myself “Aw, come on, Harvey. They don’t wanna read about this. Bebop’s great an all, but you gotta think about yer audience.” So I’ll talk about the Browns.

I wrote about this before, but there was actually a time when I remember liking Football. Right before I died, I worked on something called Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland. I’m not pitching it or nothing. I don’t care if it sells. I’m dead. I guess the money might go to my estate, but we’re not talking about a lot of dough either way, so I won’t get offended if you don’t pick it up. Anyway, I mention in that how Cleveland was actually a sports powerhouse back in the 50’s and 60’s when I was a boy. After a while, it got to be that we sort of expected to be in contention with the Browns and the Indians. But then it all went to hell. I guess it bummed of lot of fellas out. But it mirrored Cleveland’s own decline, coinciding with our failing industry. It became our identity. If I could find any sentimentality on the subject, I mighta seen a kindred spirit in those guys. They never went inta the season thinking about the Championship, and I was a file clerk so it’s not like I had any great delusions about where I was going in life.

Now a lotta folks don’t realize this, but there’s always been a bit of a rivalry between Cleveland and New York. As far as Clevelanders go, anyway. Unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, a lot of Clevelanders kinda resent the attention they get. We’ve got three professional sports teams, and only just got the monkey off our back with the Cavs winning it all. But New York, they talk about a drought when they go more than five or six years without winning anything. And believe, me, I’ve got my share of issues with the city, having flown out to do Letterman a number of times back when I was alive. Ya know, everybody talks about how Dave’s a real midwesterner having grown up in Indiana, but from my experience, he was just another smug celebrity having a laugh at my expense. I’m not mad. It was good publicity for American Splendor. I guess it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, having passed on to heaven. But it still gets on my nerves knowing I was banned. If I’m being honest.

But here’s where the story takes a twist. Now the Browns have hope. Baker Mayfield showed flashes last season, and from what I read, he’s highly accurate. Some people complain that he seems like a bit of a prick, but it don’t much bother anybody now. It’s not as if they’re gonna hang out with the fella. I read about how a lotta people laughed at the Browns on draft night for taking him first, but the team had won one game in two years, if you can believe that. Then he enters the game in week three and they start winning. Not as much as the Patriots or nothin like that, but still 7 wins and a tie is a pretty big leap. I guess it goes to show that the fans don’t know nothin neither. They had a lotta good guys on that team. Nick Chubb got close to 1,000 yards. Jarvis Landry looked pretty good. They got him outta Miami, which I guess is like revenge for Miami getting LeBron. Cleveland ain’t won nothing yet, but you gotta take your victories when you can get ’em.

This year might be better. They traded with the Giants for Oliver Vernon and Odell Beckham Jr. Those were two of the few bright spots for the Giants over the last few seasons. The Odell addition is particularly interesting to me, personally. I’ve been going over his highlights, as I don’t follow the sport too closely out here in the ether. The guy seems like a perfect wideout, with the ability to make any play he wants. The Giants say he was a bad fit with their culture, but I remember those guys in the 80’s. They thought Lawrence Taylor was a fine fit back then, and he went on to have sex with a child prostitute. Kinda seems a little hypocritical for people to talk about Odell because he hung out on a boat one time, and might have had some cocaine pizza another time if you want to speculate about a video going around the internet. I guess he said a few incendiary things about the team with Little Wayne of all people, but I don’t see where he told any lies. I knew a few ambitious types, and not everybody can take losing. It’s still not going to affect my afterlife much, but I’ll tell you what, it’s gonna be real interesting in Cleveland to listen to the way the locals start talking if the Browns see any success while the Giants stumble.

But the best part is that I can watch this happen from afar. I’m not down there anymore. The winning seems nice and maybe a little cathartic, but I know what it’ll mean for a lot of the regular guys. It’s just another form of gentrification. That’s part of the reason I never particularly rooted for the teams to do well. If things start getting too good, people might start ta view this town in a different light. All of a sudden downtown Cleveland gets a little too cosmopolitan for your average Joe. Longtime establishments can’t keep up with the rents and close down. Glass condominiums start going up. A buncha yuppies come moving in because the area seems so vibrant, and then they kick out all the poorer people who gave it the authenticity that made it so attractive ta begin with. What’s left after that? Just the glass condominiums. If ya stand back from far enough and study the skyline, you’ll start to see these buildings that don’t match the look of the city ya grew up in. It’s just some millionaire crabgrass, and the old streets ya knew are a dressed up ghost town. The Whole Foods, the Shake Shacks? They’re the price a admission.

Winning can be a real bummer.

Anyway, I guess I’m the only one of these writers that bothered ta show up. Figures. I guess that’s the story of my life. The one time I put on a clean shirt and pair of pants and go out to the big party, everybody else stayed home. It was real good writing again though. Maybe I’ll start a zine up there in heaven. Get something put together once a year or so. Eh. Maybe not. Anyway, I’m going to go have a threesome with Brigitte Bardot and Bettie Page. Turns out everybody is a pan sexual experimentalist in heaven, where there are no real boundaries in the search for ecstasy. It sounds pretty good, but you start to get used to it after a while.

I’m just kidding. It’s actually just like real life. You have to land a job and pay some lousy rent. And half the time it’s too much of a pain in the ass to bother finding a girl ta get laid. It’s actually kind of a bummer you don’t get no tunic and a harp or wings or nothin like that. But they don’t like me saying that to the people who haven’t died yet. Bums ’em out.

But that’s life, ain’t it?