Front Office Football Central - Dark Cloud's Face The Board Answers

The name Dark Cloud comes from a character in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He was a really cool dude who slayed people during the day, but still managed to make sweet love to his hot girl at night. It was a pretty awesome model and I’ve never lived up to the name, but I adopted it back when the movie came out for all of my online stuff back then. I’m way over it now, but the name stuck here.

What are your top 5 favorite sports to play? To watch?
To play? I play tennis and golf regularly. I could be a decent golfer if I could devote the time and money to it, but it’s not action-packed enough for me. I like hockey, but save for that I don’t play anything else much at all, short of my own sports I play test. I love playing toccer, I can’t lie. It’s really a sporting experience like nothing else. If I could, I’d love to learn to fence. I will once I move to a city, I think. It just seems like a neat, obscure sport that wouldn’t annoy me. Curling would be neat, but the whole broom on ice thing is like nails on a chalkboard for some strange reason.

As far as watching, I love to watch baseball live. I just love the subtleties and the atmosphere of the ballpark. A ton. Hockey. I like watching college football in recent years, too. It seems going to a D1 school turns you into a fan if you before you weren’t much of one. Lacrosse is fun to watch, because it’s unorthodox and strangely enough, I love Arena Football as a TV sport. I have no idea why. I just think the whole concept is a masterstroke made for the modern age.

If you ran the NCAA what would you do to promote the more obscure sports and the lower levels in basketball/football?

Hmm…they don’t make any money. So I don’t think the NCAA needs to do anything for them. I mean, the NCAA has established that it’s a business first. It claims its business is students, but..I dunno. I think if ESPN U were more universal and broadcast minor sports like fencing and swimming and junk that you only see in the Olympics, that minor sports could get a following. Because I think all of us sports fans on a random day kinda dig being able to check something new out.

As for lower level (D-1AA and below) football and basketball? I dunno. I’ve really grown to enjoy 1-AA in recent years for no good reason. Unlike D3, it’s clearly a level above high school at its higher levels. So it can be fun and you know a lot of those guys are playing for the love of it more than anything.

If you could go to one sporting event in the world, what would it be (you can pick a major sport for this one )

Hmm…good question. I think a World Series game where the Blue Jays clinch and win the title in Toronto. If not that? I’d say the Olympics, because it’s a set of a matchups and that’d be cool to check out different sports over time.

What measurement would you use to call a sport you invented a "success"?
I remember chatting about this over in the FOBL lounge one day and we talked about Ultimate Frisbee and used it as a good measure. Sport gets invented by kids 40 years ago and now it’s pretty much an institution at every college campus in the country. I think if one of my sports could reach that level, I could be cool with it. I mean, I think I’d way rather have the sport be at the Arena Football level or somewhere where Lacrosse is now, where it has a following somewhere. Even if it were just a random-ass country where the sports took off, I’d be way happy about that. I think I’d just love to see one of my sports reach a level where the competition entices the best players from anywhere – even if it’s just a summer camp – come out and play, that would be ideal.

From where did your love of indie/underground music stem?
You know, I always wanted to listen and explore different kinds of music. Growing up, I had lame taste other than the classical music I reared myself. Just bad pop, with a few gems involved here and there. One of my two childhood friends listens to good music and so, I expanded my horizons listening to rock and stuff with him. Eventually our musical paths diverged and mine expanded greatly as I moved around the country and the internet made it way easier to find alternative, obscure stuff. I remember the old music sharing site Audiogalaxy was amazing. It was 2000-2001 and I remember trolling the music there and finding great bands just from the comments, especially of bands from countries like South Africa (really underrated rock scene there) and stuff. So I’ve just continued to stay branching. I still don’t delve into enough of some things like classic rock or jazz. Not any particular reason for it, I pretty much stay in the margins of indie rock, metal and stuff like that. I do have a taste for what I like, I guess.

Who are some of your favorite all-time musicians/bands? Any new favorites?
Umm..I’ll always have a soft spot for Counting Crows. Adam Duritz writes his ass off, even if their stuff has jumped the shark now, in their heyday, they made enough noise to keep us happy and I’m grateful. Umm…all-time favourites?

Let’s see. Tegan and Sara, Sleater-Kinney, Live, Aloha, Circa Survive, Laura Veirs, Silverchair, Fiona Apple, Sondre Lerche, Sufjan Stevens, The Black Keys, Coheed and Cambria, Enanitos Verdes, Machine Head, Bright Eyes, Kings of Leon, Tears for Fears, Phil Collins/Genesis (I can’t help it..), TV On The Radio, The Dears, Kittie, Plus/Minus (+/-), Gnarls Barkley, Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., Cake, Alison Krauss, Chris LeDoux, Garth Brooks, Hilary Hahn, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn…and I’m sure others I can’t think of right now. But that’s a good start?

I’m really digging Santogold right now. Also, Wax On Radio and this Mexican indie singer named Ximena Sarinana. Also, a South African band I’ve followed for a while called The Parlotones had their album released in the US finally. It’s decent indie pop fare.

What are your thoughts on the Jays this year? And what about ever since the 1993 World Series? What about those two World Series years?

I won’t lie. Baseball coverage isn’t what it used to be and the Jays are almost NEVER on television anymore. So I barely follow them. It’s sad. I check the standings and expect them to be out a lot of first or the wild card and so, I never get my hopes up until September and we’re never in it anymore. It’s so frustrating that I can barely stand it. I became a fan during the World Series years and never left, despite the ineptitude of the regimes after Gillick bailed for good.

I still love the team and know that the market can support baseball at a high level and it’s good to see Rogers throwing money around like a drunken sailor. Too bad we can’t manage to get a GM who understand the need to scout talent and sign players with value. I just miss the days when the Jays uncovered talent around the world. Foresight can’t be bought, it’s developed and understood, I guess.

What do you miss most about New Jersey (besides friends and/or relatives)?
Going to a diner at 3am and ordering a Taylor Ham and Egg sandwich on a hard roll and not having them give the waitress give me a stare like I called her a ho.

What don't you miss about it (the smell, right? I bet you don't miss the smell)?
Umm..traffic, congestion and New Yorkers moving in and raising the cost of living everywhere.

Got any Al Bundy-like stories from playing tennis, or any other sports, in high school?
My senior year in HS, I was named captain of the boys tennis team. Not because I was good, but because my coach said “Ronnie tries and we like that.” It was funny. I was the only guy with 3 varsity letters, but I also only played doubles. It was strange. In any case, we started off that year almost as good as we had the year before. I think we went 13-0 before we lost our first match and I don’t know what prompted me to do this, but as a player who doubled as manager (I kept all of the stats and it wasn’t altruism or geekyness either. The newspapers actually paid you to call in the scores and so, it was a nice little side gig my coach let me have) I realized that the Watchung Conference (our league) actually is separated into two divisions and awards division titles in all sports.

I have no idea why I decided to figure out what division we were in, but I did. And found out that we were undefeated in our division to that point and if we’d beaten Kearny H.S. (who are named the Kardinals, rather than us who are the Cardinals) at home a few days later, we’d clinch the division title for the first time ever.

So Kearny came down and sure enough, we beat them 3-2 and the whole team stormed the court afterwards. It was really fun. My coach had no idea they even awarded division championships either, so had I not told him, it’s likely the league would not have realized it on their own, because apparently that’s the sort of Mickey Mouse operation they are.

We ended the year tying the school record for most wins ever for a tennis team (17), though coached loved to compare us to the 1991 team that went 17-3, because they only lost 3 matches. We also came in 3rd at the county tournament, just a few points shy of 1st. It was a fun year and a nice cap to my tennis career there.

Elvis or the Beatles?
The Beatles

Nadal or Federer?
Federer. Have you SEEN his strokes? That man is an artisan.

Sampras or Agassi?
Agassi was such a showman. And I loved the way he played and attacked.

Hoagies or Subs?
Subs
The Beach or The Shore?
The Shore
Why does California have the most lawyers and New Jersey the most toxic waste dumps?
New Jersey has more petroleum refineries than Saudi Arabia and the most shopping malls per square mile anywhere in the world, I believe.

Do you have pets?
No. But I think whenever I get married, birds will join the family. Better than a dog, I guess.

When you were in Wyoming, did you ever have a chance to ride a bull? Castrate one? Help with the birthing of a calf?
No on all counts. The first one is the only one I’d consider. I do enjoy farms and ranches. Not enough to own one, but it can be okay. I worked at a school for delinquents and they owned Llamas, sheep and a bunch of other random creatures and I got rammed by a sheep a bunch of times and avoided Llama spit.

Toccer...wave of the future or local fun?
Good question. I think that giving it a secondary name of Tennis Polo will someday lead to it catching on as a niche sport. It’s too hard to expect people to have racquets everywhere. But I’d love to see it be a TV sport. Problem is, following the ball on TV would be hard. I do think the sport has potential for fringe tennis players. Figure with the money they make playing circuit events, it’d be easy to fill a league of strong men and women in a Tennis Polo team league, provided there were better racquets produced conducive to the sport. That’s the only way I think it’d work. It’s not really conducive to kids playing it, even though it began that way. Too much potential for disaster, I think.

Do you still have your Dark Cloud manual?
Never played it. 

I don't remember if you were born there. If not, what brought you to it? Where did you live? Are you planning on coming back at any time?
I was born and raised in Union County. I go back at least once a year to visit family, they’ve scattered around the state, my parents relocated to the border of PA and NJ, so it’s a long drive when I go home since all I do is drive from where I grew up west a lot. But it’s fun.

Favorite restaurants/bars?
I left at 19. So I never went anywhere good to hang out back home. I had a favorite diner growing up that got lame and started looking for others. My best friend still lives there and swears by a few that he goes to religiously.

You were in (still in?) Wyoming right? What was that culture shock like? What do people in Wyoming think of Jersey?
I moved from there in February. It was a strange change. I’d been in small town America for a while before that, so it wasn’t as stark as it could’ve been. I started off in northeastern Wyoming which is true Wyoming and then moved to Southeast Wyoming which is as urban as Wyoming gets. It was a strange change, but the latter was far more palatable. I’d been from Jersey for years before I moved there, so that made it an easier move, otherwise, no way I could’ve done it.

You run into more people than you’d think who have been to Jersey or know someone who lives there. Wyoming folks almost always have family who live somewhere else, so they almost know more about other places than people I run into from other parts of the country.

How are you liking the Chicagoland area?
I haven’t moved yet. I will sometime later this year or as soon as the summer. A few things are still up in the air, mostly related to my job situation.

What was your favorite childhood tv show?
Thundercats

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
The ability to read and absorb knowledge like Johnny Number 5 from Short Circuit did.

What would you do with 1 million dollars? 10 million?
A million? These days, that’s not a lot of money sadly. But more than I have now. Umm..I’d invest a good part of it in diversified areas. Pay off all of my debt, pay off my mother’s house for her and start working for myself immediately.

Which FOFCers have you met? Who would you like to meet?
Izulde went to the University of Wyoming when I was there and we lived in the same building for the month I lived in the dorms, so I went upstairs and said hi once. It was neat to know someone on earth who plays text sims, since none of my friends do. As far as meeting others? I’m up for meeting a few folks, just depends on the context. I think there are some interesting characters here and given the years a lot of us have been around, it’d be interesting just to chat about fake sports for real.

What bad habits drive you crazy?
Umm…depends on the day. I’m sorta quirky.

What was the happiest moment of your life? Saddest?
Umm..happiest? The jury is still out. I think it’s forthcoming quite soon. Saddest, tied for when my brother died (I was 7, he was 3) and when my grandparents died when I was in HS

What do you do for a living? What is your dream job?
I’ve been working in higher ed for the past few years as a web manager. Dream job? Being self-employed. It’ll happen within the year, just a matter of when and what that parameters will be.

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
Umm..probably cheaper to put a drop of lemon in soap than it is to fill juice with real fruit juice.

Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
Beats me.