I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons it look me so long to find a job last year was because there were several cases in which I tried to use these columns as part of my portfolio (and the fact that I look like a douche, as portrayed in the picture above). Some of these Winks Thinks may actually be passable for legitimate journalism, but the majority of them are just insights as to why no one should ever employ me. Sometimes I say things so revealing, it's a wonder Walsh even lets me write on this site. And sometimes I write articles so embarrassing, that I ashamed of myself because I know my grandma might be reading it. Well, this is going to be one of those columns.

Last weekend, my much anticipated trip to Cleveland for the Packers/Browns game finally game to fruition. Along with thirteen other diehards, we traveled the excess of toll roads and made it to The Cleve late Friday afteroon. It's the third straight year we've planned an annual Packers game road trip, a trip we used to call the "Put 'Er In The Old Vice Tour" when we still liked Favre. But now that he sucks, we've renamed it the "Put 'Er There" trip, as that is what my buddy Udee mistakenly called it throughout the first trip. So that's a little history for you. Of course, these trips haven't always been just about the game itself. For the most part, the game is the calm three hours during an otherwise weekend of pure insanity. After neaIrly dying on the way to St. Louis two years ago, and after the shenanigans in Nashburg last year, The Cleve had a lot to live up to. But without a doubt, it most definitely did. In fact, I'm surprised I still have enough brain cells left to tell you about it.

First of all, you know the weekend is going to be a long one when one of the guys brings a fold-up beer pong table to the hotel room. And with fourteen guys, you're definitely going to go through a lot of beer when you make a double-elimination beer pong tournament. Granted, because I'm not very good at anything, I was the weak link of the beer pong tournament all weekend. If any of you play the "overshoot" rule then you know why I ended up drinking a lot of my opponent's beer. So before I even had my first taste of the Cleveland nightlife, I was already very excited to be there.

Naturally, after a few games of beer pong, you're going to be a little hungry, so we went to this bar called Scorchers and fellow Bucky Channel writer Gweeds and I ate the bar out of hot wings and onion rings, always a healthy food choice. After our meal, we did the obligatory "Where are you from? / High Fives" conversation that all Packers fans do with each other at away games, and then explored around the bar a little bit. It was then when I saw the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my entire life:

You know those claw drop games that are in places like Chuck E Cheese and Discovery Zone, where you spend 50 cents and can win a stuffed animal? That's right, this is the exact same kind of thing only it costs two bucks a try and it's a tank full of LIVE LOBSTERS!!! I was floored that something like this actually existed, so naturally I had to spend whatever it took to win myself a lobster (which the bar would then cook for you). Well, this being the first night I didn't want to spend too much money too quickly, so I decided to call it quits twenty dollars in. Yep, I spent twenty dollars on that stupid thing. I still don't know how people actually win this game, the closest I got was a lobster just above the water before he shimmied his way back to safety. In hindsight, I really wish I would have kept trying, because lobsters are delicious. 

So with that good base of wings and beer in me (minus the should have been eaten lobster, of course), I only had one mission in mind for the entire trip, and that was to become the trip's MVP. Each year, an MVP of the trip is determined after we decide who either had the biggest impact on the trip or who had the most impressive performance. That, and that alone, was my one goal of the entire weekend. On Friday night, I decided the best way to achieve that would be to find a Bluff Climber, Winks Thinks lingo for a girl that looks a lot better in the evening then she does when you wake up next to her. And with girls galore at the next bar we went to, The Blind Pig, I was not going to go home empty handed.

Only I did exactly that. I feel creepy about it now, but I must have gone up to every girl in that bar and tried to do the creepy guy dance on her. The kind of dance you would do on someone you kind of know but really only talk to when you're drunk. The kind of dance that works a lot better at house parties than it does when you're twenty-five years old and out at a bar. So yeah, that was pretty depressing. After that 0-for-the century performance, I decided that hooking up with a bluff climber was not going to be my ticket to win the trip's MVP. Minus the Milf Bluff Climber I danced with a little the following night - in front of her way hotter daughter, no less - I didn't end up falling in love with anyone this year.

The next day we decided that since Cleveland is actually a pretty cool town, we didn't want to spend the whole weekend in an altered state. On Saturday afternoon, half of our group decided to check out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right on the shores of Lake Erie. This is the one part of the trip I'm not really sure how to describe, although I could probably end up writing a whole column on it. I was absolutely mesmorized by what I saw in this museum. My first thoughts were that it would be cool to see some stuff, and it would maybe take about an hour to just browse around. But if you want to actually see and study every thing they have there, it might take an entire week. Besides the posters and the outfits and the things you'd expect to see, what amazed me most were the letters and documents that were kept throughout the years. Letters from Pete Townsend to a journalist about how much he loved The Kinks, rejection letters from record companies to a young U2, and the original notebook that Billy Joel wrote "We Didn't Start the Fire" on. Just an insane amount of stuff at this place. I think the thing that amazed me the most was the wall featuring stuff from Jim Morrison's life - from drawings he mad his mother in first grade, to his cub scout uniform, to the letter his dad wrote the police after they arrested him for getting naked on a Miami stage. I probably spent 45 minutes looking at purely Jim Morrison stuff, and I have never really been a fan of The Doors. The place is that awesome. If you like music in any way at all whatsoever, you have to get to that museum.

Follow that experience up with the second most insane thing I've ever seen in my life, which is the giant "Free" stamp sitting in a park in downtown Cleveland. I'm not sure what the hell it's supposed to mean, and I'm actually not sure I want to, but some how the people of Cleveland thought it would be cool to showcase this. As the passerby said to me as we were taking the picture, "Man, did you guys really come all the way from Wisconsin to rag on this stupid thing?"

Um, yes. Yes we did.

After we got our learning experience for the trip out of the day, it was time to do one thing and one thing only, and that was to get ourselves pumped up for the Packers game. Naturally, the way to do this was another beer pong tournament, followed by round two at the bars. Well, round two at the bars didn't last very long for me, and that's where the problems for the weekend started to begin. Earlier I mentioned my friend Udes, and he was once again with us on the strip. Well, the Saturday during the weekend just happened to be this kid's birthday, so what do guys do on their friends birthday? Yep, strip club. This wasn't just any strip club either, it was the kind of strip club you see on something like Entourage. For the record, I've only been to two strip clubs in my life, and one was in Fond du Lac, so my experience isn't very extensive. That bit of information is crucial to the next part of the story.

Because it was Udes' birthday, we had do to something for him, so me and another friend arraigned to have three women dance on him on the stage. First of all, a giant no thank you to the guys that helped arraigned this for us. There is no worse guy in America than the guy that works at the strip club, as their ego is naturally inflated be like 100. Anyways, I found out just how seriously they take their jobs when I tried popping a picture with my cell phone while Udes was on the stage. Anyone who has ever been to a strip club knows that you don't take pictures, but I guess I was the one person in this world that didn't. Even so, one of my best friends was not only being danced on by three hotties, but they were in the middle of taking of his shirt and then for some reason taking off his pants as well. How do you not get a picture of that? Anyways, after quarreling with a bouncer for a good five minutes, the fine people at Christie's let me stay, and the night continued on.

After that interesting conversation, all I wanted to do was sit down and relax for a few minutes. But whether it was the club wanted a piece of my money or not, a chick tractor beamed me and gave me a good old three minute lap dance, one that I was not really looking for. After she was done - and for those of you wondering, this was definitely the hottest chick I've ever interacted with in my life - she then said, "20 Bucks". For some reason, I thought the lap dance was complimentary, but then again, I also just tried to take a picture of my friend a strip club, so you be the judge. When all I could scrounge up at the time was 15 bucks, she then said, "There's an ATM right over there." This was someone who was not going to take no for an answer, which I found both threatening and desireable at the same time.

So I told her I'd be right back, and proceeded to go to the ATM. I could have bolted, but I'm an honest man. As I was taking out the money (12 dollar ATM fee, ps) I turned around and noticed that the chick was now directly behind me, shirt off, waiting for her money. I was just followed to the ATM by a stripper, something that I'm going to make sure never happens to me again in my life. Anyway, I just threw another twenty at her and walked away, because I just did not feel like asking for change for someone who just put their chest in my face. After a performance like that, my MVP chances were starting to look pretty slim. The rest of the night was a blur, but I'm pretty sure at one point I was given a swirlie. I'll just leave that sentence as it is.

Finally, we were at Sunday morning, the highlight of the trip. It was gameday in Cleveland, and their was a pretty good atmosphere downtown for the game. There are few things like NFL Sundays in an actual NFL city, and this was no different, despite the fact that the Browns are terrible. The scene at some bars was pretty good, but there were very few people tailgaiting or anything like that. Packers fans were definitely outnumbered by Browns fans, but I felt that we were going to have a pretty good showing at the game. That was until we actually headed up to the stadium, and were surrounded in a sea of Brown.

This is when I started to get a tad bit annoying. The Browns and Packers only play once about every four years, so the fanbases don't really have a lot of things to rip on each other for. So what was the number one thing Browns fans decided to yell at me (besides eating cheese)? You guessed it, Brett Favre. Every time I stopped off in the bathroom or got one on one with a Browns fan, they brought up Brett Favre. This, even though our current quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, was in the middle of shredding them up on the field for the entire afternoon. I just didn't get why this is what they were ripping on us for, especially as they were a franchise that has gone through Kelly Holcomb, Charlie Fyre, Jeff Garcia, Tim Couch, Derek Anderson, and countless others. It was so annoying.

I didn't want to respond really, and to be honest a lot of Browns fans were surprised that we hated Brett Favre now. I think they thought that we'd wish he was still a Packer, when that couldn't be further from the truth. But, because I'm kind of a jerk as well, I decided to follow up with responses like "Hey, what was your record in 1998 again?" and other comments referencing when the Browns moved. In fact, I tried to compare Favre going to Minnesota to the Browns leaving for Baltimore to one guy, and I think he was ready to throw down on me for being an idiot. Still, Browns fans for the most part were not very welcoming, but I guess that's to be expected for a team that can't even get a sack on the Packers offensive line. Overall, not very impressed with the Browns fanbase.

That last sentence couldn't be more true than when half of the stadium was gone midway through the third quarter. The stadium's escalators were carrying jobs out of Cleveland so fast that before you knew it, all that was left was about 5,000 Packers fans even though there was still five minutes on the clock in the fourth quarter. We definitely got the "Go Pack Go" chant going at that part in the game, and it couldn't have been more awesome. Actually, I do credit Cleveland fans for one thing, as when we tried to chant "Go Pack Go" in the first quarter, they responded with "Go Back Home, Go Back Home". Maybe you've heard that one before, but I never have, and I thought it was pretty clever. So props for that.

As for the game itself, as I'm going to try to relate this column to sports for just one moment here, it was a very good performance by the Green and Gold. Learning that Ryan Grant still knows how to rush is a very comforting feeling, and Rodgers is continuing to at least put himself in the running for an MVP award. A.J. Hawk looked great on defense finally, and the whole team as a whole played with the swagger they were lacking since the preseason. Maybe it was because this game felt more like a preseason game than anything else, but hey, a win is a win. Now, you can't judge a team based off victories against Detroit and Cleveland, but I think the Packers have things figured out a little better than the last time they played Minnesota, and I have no doubt that the Packers will knock off the Vikings this weekend (although I did say that last time, I know).

How the rest of my weekend went, well, I wish I knew. I did plan on taking it easy for the rest of Sunday afternoon, but after a particular Tracy Byrd song played on the jukebox, things went downhill from there. Me and my roomate Bear decided to follow the "instructions" to the song by going the full ten rounds of Jose Cuervo as the song suggests. What a mistake that turned out to be.

Round One - Doing well, watching the Falcons/Cowboys game and regretting my decision to start Matt Ryan over Tony Romo.

Round Two - Bear heads to the bathroom when someone starts yelling "Hey, Mark Tauscher" to him. Bear is confused as to why this is happening, only to realize that the person yelling it is none other than former Packers center Frank Winters. Bear played center in high school, so I know this made his year. I guess Winters lives down there, but turns out he's not as friendly as we thought. I regret not yelling at him for the year in fantasy when I named my team "Ol' Bag of Donuts" only to lose in the championship game. That was in 2002. I haven't been to the playoffs since. It's all Frank's fault, don't you tell me any different.

Round Three - This actually happened. Some guy came up to my friend Woos to tell him that he talked to Brett Favre's dad in Memphis last weekend, and said that Brett would be back there to sign autographs sometime this weekend. My friend Woos deadpanned to him, "Brett Favre's dad has been dead for six years". I have never seen anyone look so stupid after that. What an idiot. That's Cleveland for you.

Round Four - Awkward flirting with female bartender that goes nowhere. Standard.

Round Five - New bar.

Round Six - It's a bar and restaurant, so I order a pizza and devour it completely. I then knock some coleslaw all over the place, putting a red flag right square on my head as far as the bartender is concerned.

Round Seven - Escorted by a policeman out of the bar.

Round Eight - Called ex-girlfriend to tell her what just happened, thinking she would be impressed. She most definitely was not.

Round Nine - A quick reversal of the shirts I'm wearing and I'm back in the bar.  

Round Ten - ZZZ. And that's the weekend. No MVP for me, although I was voted the trip's least valueable player. To review: 10 rounds, swirlee, no bluff climbers, followed by stripper to ATM, took picture at strip club, passed out early on Sunday. Yeah, not my best weekend. But one of the most fun times I've ever had. Can't wait to do it again next year. 

Thanks, Moses Cleaveland.

See you next year, Boston?