Ni hao, y’all! It’s me, the Optometrist – checking in from the Rubber City on the eve of an annual event we like to call "The Wine and Gold Scrimmage."
Along with TheBron’s Bike-a-Thon, the perennial exhibition is one of two occasions in which we have the chance to celebrate All Things Akron.
I’m sure cavs.com’s resident Beat Weiner, Joe Gabriele, will fill you in on all the details of the W&G Scrimmage with some cockamamie recap tomorrow afternoon – (including the “debut” of the Diesel). Normally, I would predict the game’s results, but picking one group of Cavaliers against another group of Cavaliers crosses up my wiring.
So, as long as we’re down here in Summit County, I decided to provide another updated list of THE CITY OF AKRON’S GREATEST CONTRIBUTIONS TO MANKIND.
Some of you might be thinking that TheBron is the ONLY great thing to come out of Akron. Nothing could be further from the truth. He’s just the best thing to come out of Akron. Big difference.
Aside from the Chosen One, Akron has given us Quaker Oats Cereal, Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, the Lime Spider, Alcoholics Anonymous, the country’s best Soap Box Derby and the gorgeous new InfoCision Stadium – whose name rolls off the tongue.
The list only goes to 10 – not 11 – so I had to make some painful omissions, including former Playmate of the Year, Heather Kozar, silky smooth crooner, James Ingram, Melina Eleni Kanakaredes of CSI: NY, the “master manipulator” of Watergate, John Dean, HeeHaw’s Grandpa Jones, former Judas Priest frontman Tim "Ripper" Owens, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, televangelist Rex Humbard, and, of course, David Allen Coe, the guy who wrote the Johnny Paycheck classic, “Take This Job and Shove It.”
Enjoy the list of luminaries and perhaps I’ll see some of you on Saturday afternoon at The JAR …