The Valley man behind viral Browns rant

As a journalist, columnist and an admitted smart aleck, I love a good one- liner.

This week, when I was first sent the YouTube video “A Browns Fan’s Reaction To Today’s Game Against Houston,” I rolled between silent appreciation for the good writing and the laugh-out-loud explosion reserved for Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin on “Saturday Night Live.”

That’s how good the video is.

It’s too good, in fact, to believe that it’s truly from just any Browns fan as it would make you think.

(OK — stop reading here. If you have not seen this video, please put down The Vindy, go to your computer, get on vindy.com and go halfway down the page to the dapper-looking me, and click on my blog. You’ll have a lot more appreciation for this story if you do this. The video has 500,000 views, and you should be one of them. Or just ignore me and read on.)

Indeed, the video is not just from any Browns fan. It is from Mike Polk Jr. Yes, a Browns fan. But he’s also a Newton Falls-born, Warren-raised and JFK-graduated Valley native.

And he’s pretty darn funny.

Polk, 34, has made funny his business since he graduated from Kent State. He’s done stand-up, sketch performance, cable-access shows, been on Cleveland television, worked for an HBO comedy project called HBO Labs and writes for a Web media company called Break Media, which owns, hosts and markets what Polk calls “man sites.” And “man sites” pretty much starts to frame his humor and comedy — off-color, irreverent, sarcastic, politically incorrect ... but really, really funny if that content suits you.

He’s good at being bad. Lots of it is on his website, mikepolkjr.com. And you get it quickly in talking with him. Here are the snippets from our email interview this week:

“I was a kid in Newton Falls. When my dad made too many enemies there, we moved to Warren. I got a swell education there. Prostitutes propositioned me when I’d get home from basketball practice. I got mugged at gunpoint in my own backyard. Twice.

“I was a terrible student [at JFK] — just deplorable — so I attended Kent State.”

With that skew, he’s made the absurd side of life his career. Lots of his work is making spoof videos — either sketch comedy or song parodies. He’s proud that he was doing this before YouTube ever existed.

His parodies include “One Semester of Spanish Love Song,” which has 6.8 million YouTube views.

Another song, “Honest R&B Song” is a rip on the sexy boy-band love songs from the likes of *N Sync and Boyz II Men. But Polk sings that making love all night long is unrealistic, but he could promise seven good minutes. It’s been played 9.3 million times on YouTube.

Again — off-color, not for the kids, but funny in that realm.

He has a biting, outrageous take on Cleveland in the song “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video.” It has 4.2 million views. It includes lines such as: “… Cleveland leads the nation in drifters.” “Under construction since 1868.” “Our main export is crippling depression.”

For seven years, he’s been with the “Last Call Cleveland” sketch- comedy group. They perform around Cleveland and across the U.S. In Toronto, they won “Best of The Festival” last year.

In fact, Polk and “Last Call” will perform Dec. 9 at Bella Cena Restaurant in Hermitage, Pa.

And right now, he’s riding a wave based on the viral explosion of his Browns fan rant.

If you have not watched it, Polk filmed it by himself after the Browns’ loss last week. With just him in front of the headlights on his car, he trained his camera on Cleveland Browns Stadium and proceeded to berate the stadium as the cause for the Browns’ ineptness. The video editing is as good as the writing.

“Do you understand it is statistically harder to be this consistently bad than it is to be occasionally, accidentally good?”

“Did you see that Packers-Chargers game?! It’s like they’re playing a different sport than you are!

“We don’t expect you to be good. We just need you to be watchable.”

“I know there are way more important things than football, but you are supposed to be our pleasant distraction from those things.”

His rant builds to this explosion: “You are a factory of sadness.”

He then closes the rant with shrunken, hushed resignation: “I’ll see you Sunday.”

Polk said he grew up a Browns fan as his dad had season tickets. About five years ago, his dad became fatigued with the futility, and Polk took over the tickets.

His best memory is having Ernest Byner sign his jersey as a kid.

His most famous memory might be this video rant.

The 500,000 views include 1,600 comments, including fan requests for a weekly rant — even if the Browns win. One fan asked him to come to St. Louis to do a rant there. Said others:

“Mike Polk is the best thing in Cleveland now. That’s not that impressive. But I mean it as a compliment.”

“This made news in Houston. True art.”

“Sir — I don’t know you, but I want to have your babies — and I am a married man.”

“As a formerly long- suffering Saints fan ... You are my hero.”

Polk said the video was pretty spontaneous.

He just ranted for 10 minutes, then boiled it down to 1 minute and posted it online.

“The video wasn’t scripted, but I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to say.

“It’s been festering for 20 years.”

As for the notoriety and what happens next, he’s open to anything.

His dream job is to perform as a bit character in something that he wrote.

“I’d just come into the shot for like 10 seconds, say something snarky, and then you wouldn’t see me for two more episodes.”

But most of all, he’ll just take a Browns win.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com.