Furnier

The NFL chose to support Socialism, Anarchy and Marxism.

I stopped watched the NFL or supporting it in ANY way. It's funny the people in my life (work, family, friends) that are amazed. It's truly simple. Browns (NFL) fan for 50 years (1970-2019). Proud American since birth (1962-2020) for 58 years. 58-50 wins. I love my country and even in my nearly old age I will fight for her in any way I can.

I won't argue or fight with ANYONE here. There are lots of you who I have deep respect for including the originator of this page and the current moderator. I respect your right to feel the way you do. I expect the same. I do and will miss you guys. Love ya man.

PS: When and if Clay Matthews and Joe Thomas are inducted into the Hall Of Fame I will be there to cheer those guys. 

3 minutes ago, VikingDawg said:

Not to derail the thread any, just had a question about the lady that passed away a few years ago, Kathy was her name I believe? Was that the lady that used to post on several Browns boards as Hiwaygal back in the day? Thanks. 

No. That was Kathy Hutchins aka KS Hutchins aka Woof Woof Kathy. She is also sorely missed. Kathy was around before all of us. She started on the Compuserve Browns board and was in on the ground floor of the AOL Grandstand board even before I got there......which was January 1995. I'm sure Stan is currently picking on her about her orange bra and socks. 

Judging by the turnout at Stan's service tonight he never met anyone that wasn't his friend. I never saw anything quite like it. Farewell my friend.......and yeah, there needs to be a memorial party/tailgate/weekend.

4 hours ago, Zombo said:

So I guess it is time for me to share my Stan story…

October of 1997 … The Indians and Marlins are in the World Series, the Browns are in limbo and I am assembling a desk in my new condo as I await the delivery of my Gateway2000 … I’m going on the World Wide Web, Ladies and Gentleman!

It arrives, I take it out of the box, plug in the phone line, turn it on, slap in that free AOL disk and I’m ready to surf. Screen name? Hmmm. I’ll pick one for business, Meehan2000, and one for fun … It’s Halloween, so how about my favorite Munster’s character … Zombo2000 it is. (Kids, “2000” was very sheik in 1997.)

So I’m in … And the first two words I typed in to the Internet were “Cleveland Browns”, Well those “keywords” took you to a place called AOL Grandstand. A wonderful place with all of these colorful characters like “Ghoolie” and “Hoorta” and “Furnier” posting about my beloved Cleveland Browns.

You have to remember, before the internet, many of us Browns fans were isolated. I spent my whole adult life Fall Sundays sitting by myself in the corner of a sports bar in New Jersey, Michigan, Florida, California or somewhere with the “bad TV” and no sound. So this was a spectacular discovery that I was not alone in my Browns obsession.

So then there was this character, “Anteater” or some sort of Sheet. He seemed like the “know-it-all” of the group. Who was this guy, an ex-football coach or something? He had a method of letting somebody get carried away with themselves and talking out of their asses … and then he would dissect their posts line by line and make them look like an idiot. This guy was good.

So after lurking for a couple weeks, I finally got up enough gumption to respond to one of his posts. It was a full year and a half before the “new” Browns first draft, but this Anteater guy was already trying to convince everybody that Ohio State LB Andy Katzenmoyer needed to be the Browns first pick. I made a reasonable reply that it was too early to choose, but that they should probably consider at QB with that pick, and I’m not sure how I worded it, but I will never forget his response: “That’s a real knee slapper, Zombo…” and it was on. I had my first internet battle. I famously called Katzenmoyer a “big dumb redneck” and we started debating and disagreeing on every subject … and we never stopped until last Saturday Night. In fact we were still arguing about the 1999 NFL draft the last time I saw him.

And when I say “argued”, I mean we almost always disagreed … but always made each other laugh.

After we both had that “Who’s this guy?” moment, the Atenears/Zombo show was on. We picked a side, dug in and destroyed everything in our path to make our point and took wild swings at each other’s loyal henchmen.

I became the leader of “Camp Couch” while Stan became the voice of “The Dark Side”.

We argued for days about legendary Browns like Corey Bridges, Darren “Chia Pet” Chiaverini and Terry “1700” Kirby. The only thing we agreed on was that Scott Rehberg sucked.

The 1999 NFL draft was more analyzed on the AOL board than any Presidential Election anywhere. Was Chris “Rosey” Palmer going to select my boy Tim Couch or Skippy’s idea of drafting Ricky “small hands” Williams or doing the Ditka Trade for a bevy of picks … if you supported anybody else, like say Akili Smith  … you were gay.

So when the dust had settled over the draft, and we looked over the scorched earth of the AOL Grandstand Board to see who was still standing … we realized we had a pretty good group. And we also realized that real football games were going to start and we should get together … as in meet as real people and not our screen name characters.

So, after the Hall of Fame game against Dallas (Couch looked great) our first preseason game was in Tampa, two hours from me. We knew this great Camp Couch Loyalist named “Flugels” who lived in the Tampa area, and I was only a couple hours away, so we convinced Stan he should come down to Tampa on “business”. So he set up a few sales call for his Penis Pump manufacturing business and made the trip and the first official Browns Board tailgate consisted of Me, Stan, Flugels, a crazy cat named “Vette” and some friend Flugels brought along who we called Booger … because he looked like the character from the Revenge of the Nerds movies ... in the parking lot of the Best Western walking distance from “The Big Sombrero” in Tampa.

That night was a whole story itself … If I see you at a tailgate next year ask me about the “Pizza Boy”, Vette’s arrest, the cops in the parking lot and the fight in the stands. What can I say … I may be one of the graybeards around here now, but when we started on AOL, I was 33 and Stan was 30 and we both acted like we were 20. Or 17. Some will say I still do.

So then Stan got together with Ed and Don and started the tailgate in the Flats down by some bridge. It was awesome. We had our own AOL Private “Clubhouse” board now, thanks Furnier, away from the prying eyes of trolling Steeler and Ravens fans, and Stan and some blonde chick named “Boo” were the moderators after we chased off the rent-a-cop moderators they provided us. Poor Boo … We gave her so much Sheet.

But Stan and Boo were on TV for the first ever Cleveland Browns Home Game in 99 against the Steelers telling the newcasters about this crazy “internet group” from the “world wide web” that had never met on-line before that day. And Ed was grilling burgers for a whole lot more people than he ever imagined.

I made it up to that tailgate later that season and finally met the legendary “Roachmaster”, “Furnier”, “Hoorta”, and the larger than life “Gumbo Dog” … amongst many, many other great folks that I met that day and at future tailgates.

I got Season Tickets in 2000 and always made it up to one or two tailgates a year and that is where my friendship with all these fine folks began … at the Browns Board Tailgate Stan started.

We may have found a permanent tailgate home in Cleveland (we thought), but we were still lost in the internet desert on-line, with Stan as our Moses trying to find us a place. The Clubhouse thing was dropped by AOL, we went back to the regular boards, but it was too trolly with Steeler and Ratbird heathen, we spent all of our time fighting with them and never got to discuss the important issues of the day like Wali Rainer’s bleeding forehead and Percy Ellsworth’s inability to cover anything.

We went to a CBS Sportsline forum that Stan secured for us … but it was too corporate … too many rules. Fatdad (Jim Deetz) started his own Cleveland website “The River Burns”, but God rest his soul, he wasn’t focused too much on the sports part of it and we knew we needed another place, a place devoted to Cleveland Browns Football … A Browns Board.

Stan and I were very tight friends at this point. He always invited me to stay at his house, offered to feed me, whatever I needed … but I was doing pretty well for myself so I’d usually get a hotel room for us to trash as we literally spent the entire tailgate weekends partying. He was with Kathy now … He was still with the “Toothless Hag” when I met him, and I was there for him through his divorce and then he met “Hag2” and they blended their two young families and added a fifth kid, Alexis … and Kathy put up with out shenanigans. Or, actually, she participated in most of them. The stories from this era are legendary, again, each should have it’s own thread: “The Bloody Turban”, the “Cab door”, Zombo Gets Arrested (OK, “detained”) Parts I, II, III and IV …

About this time, Stan decided he was buying his own website dedicated to Browns fans. He wanted me to be an administrator and moderator while he did the backstage tech stuff. I had never moderated, didn’t want to moderate … I wanted to be the “Bad Guy” … but when Stan asked, you knew it was for the good of our little on-line family, so I accepted, and here I am today moderating 2,000 cool guys and Ghoolie.

Marko and Hoorta were tabbed as moderators as well, and the First Lady of the Browns Board, KS “Kathy” Hutchins, affectionately known as “Mom”, kept us in line. And all was right with the world … Except the Browns still sucked.

My world changed in the Summer of 2007. That is when I found out that the woman that I had been married to for two and half years was actually a sick criminal strung out on prescription pain killers who had taken out second mortgages on all of my Florida properties, taken out countless credit lines under my name, stole $13,000 from my elderly mother and ran up $128,000 in credit cards in my name. In one year I went from thinking I was financially set to financial ruin. When I finally got away from this awful human to visit my family in Pennsylvania, I lost everything I owned in one day. She cleaned out our joint checking accounts, cleaned out our house, reported everything “stolen” and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it because I was married to it. All I had was the clothes on my back, my trusty beagle, my car and a friend's laptop. Thank God I had that laptop because the Brownsboard was my only place of peace.

Then came the hordes of false accusations of unspeakable crimes, going after my family, my Mom, my disabled brother, my innocent 10 year old niece … No, I didn’t kill her … But I should have. She went to prison. I went to hell.

The only person I reached out to outside of the family was Stan. I met Stan and Ed and a few others in Youngstown for a high school football game, it was the first time I had gone anywhere socially since everything went down, and I was a wreck inside. Stan never judged, never waivered. He had my back. He invited me out to the Browns opener against the Steelers on his dime. That’s when I met Marko, the Soup Nazi, Jarrod, and a few others but most importantly, I had a good time … and forgot my troubles for a day or two. I don’t think I ever thanked Stan for that, we never got all gushy and talked about feelings and Sheet … but he knew I had his back and I knew he had mine.

Eventually I got back in the game and the tailgates remained my one thing to look forward to every year no matter what. Marko, Mike from Atlanta, Howie and Gareth from the UK and Keith from Scotland joined our tightknit group with Stan and Ed and Don. There was Russ, and the other Russ, and Rich, and Gipper and the legendary Westside Steve. There are a ton of other folks that were huge parts of the Browns Board and the tailgates and if I started naming, names, that is a whole ‘nother thread too.

Then there was the big Anderson/Quinn wars where Stan and I MAY have taken out some frustrations in our personal life on half the Browns Board. The Browns Board had become too much work. It was supposed to be fun. Stan grew tired of people complaining about the way THEY wanted the board run, and he reminded everyone that it was his board. He once told me “You know, I just started all this so everyone could have a place to come and you, me and Flugels could enjoy ourselves at night”. It became too much. We chased off about half our membership, but lost a lot of good posters and good people in the process, and Stan was hurt that some of his closest and favorite posters went to the new rival board.

After that, I think Stan felt a little bit betrayed, and he became increasingly frustrated with how the Browns were run and he slowly relinquished control of the board to me and eventually pretty much stopped posting all together.

But he never closed the place down, he kept it going for his true friends. I know for a fact he has lost money on this site every year. And he grumbled about it. And he threatened to shut it down … but he never could. Because his friends were still there. And that will tell you everything you need to know about Stan.

Stan and Kathy were made for each other. Funniest couple you will ever meet. One night out on the town with them and you will end up crying your eyes out in laughter every time, guaranteed. Kathy was always a good friend to all of us “idiots”, and Stan and Kathy always rolled out the red carpet when the “wolfpack” came to town to drink themselves silly and watch Phil Dawson kick field goals.

Stan and I stayed in touch the past few years mainly through Facebook, texts and messages. Not like the AOL days where we were “Instant Messaging” each other every night laughing about the trouble we were stirring up on the Board, but enough to know we still had each other’s backs. I missed the tailgate weekend this year, and it bothers me more than you know.

I miss that big guy with the big laugh and the razor-sharp sense of humor. He was loyal, he was fair, and he was bigger than life. And I can’t wait to belly up to that bar in the afterlife (Yes, there’s a bar) and hear from across the room “Hey, Zippy, that’s a real knee slapper…”

Zombo

 

Wow. Fantastic post John. I had no idea the depth of what you went through. I'm glad you made it through that......and God bless Stan for being there when you needed him.

I wasn't as close to Stan as many of you were. Not long after that first amazing tailgate in 1999 my now ex-wife went off the rails and it fell to me to hold my family together for the next 12 years so I was extremely limited in how much and how often I could be involved in the tailgates, the board and all the festivities surrounding a Browns home weekend. I only bring this up to shine a light on my favorite memory of Stan. In 2000 my ex-wife had left and I was working a full-time job and taking care of all the needs of all four of my kids. A truly daunting task that I had discussed with very few people. It wasn't fun to talk about. I had revealed it to Stan however. That summer he invited my sons and I to his home for a day of fun. He provided food. Opened his home to us and escorted us to the Browns practice facility where for the first time in my long Browns fandom I got to watch the Browns at training camp. It was a wonderful day of peace for my sons and I amidst the maelstrom that was our lives at that time. Stan ENTIRELY made that day happen and he did it for us. My older son was never a big sports fan but he still talks about that day. My younger son became a HUGE sports fan and that day was a catalyst for that. I can still remember sitting there next to him discussing alternately, The Browns and our kids. He loved his kids. He loved the kids he coached. Collectively they were everything to him. I always liked Stan and felt he understood that everyone deserved their voice here. That everyone had a different way of expressing their feelings regarding our team and he let that happen and let us be who we are for good or bad or ugly. Stan is (I refuse to say was) the ultimate Cleveland fan and my respect for that alone would be enough for me to have loved the guy......but the way he was to his kids and the way he treated my kids forever earned my respect. Stan, thank you. You will forever be missed. 

This is absolutely horrible news. I never knew a more dedicated advocate for Cleveland, Cleveland Sports, Cleveland Fans and no one was more fun to be around. There are people that just bring life and excitement to everything they do and that was ALWAYS Stan. I am blessed to have known him for 22 years and to have been able to call him my friend. This is a huge blow. It takes a lot for me to be speechless but I really am at this moment God Bless you man, God bless your family and thank you so much for this forum, for the tailgates, for all the sparring matches dating back to the AOL days. You good sir are irreplaceable. 😪😪😥

Just spent 10 minutes entertaining myself on the Jags message board. They said Shaun Rogers threw Brad Meester around like a rag doll all day. Complained that we should have been flagged for interference on every play of their last drive. Bitching about how many Browns fans were in the stadium and that their music guy actually played "Who Let The Dawgs Out" for us. They're in mourning over there and the lead mourner is JustWhineBaby, our loudmouthed friend from last week. I don't think we'll be seeing her here again.

Well, it's about time for the ass-faced Rat fans to make an appearance.

Doug