Munch Bishop — Loves: Capitalization, Exclamation Points; Hates: English Language; Writes Like: Teenage Girl

I don’t know if you folks ever wander over to ESPNCleveland.com and check out their blogs. I sincerely hope that you don’t. But maybe you have, by accident or to serve some deep masochistic urges.

Perhaps the incessant urgings from WKNR personalities during their shows to check out their blogs have gotten to you and you clicked over out of curiosity. Maybe you said to yourself, “Hey, that Roda seems to have a lot of interesting points on the radio, maybe he has more of those on WKNR’s website.” You would be wrong, of course, but Roda is not the point here.

The point is Mark “Munch” Bishop — the early morning host who believes that volume and inflection are stand-ins for insight; the guy who has somehow made a career out of talking despite possessing a vocabulary that would be lucky to crack the 100-word mark; the common man whose I’m-with-you-friend shtick and affectations either belie an unsettling misjudgment of his audience’s intelligence or prove the lack of his; the one whose very expertise seems to be predicated almost entirely on enthusiasm; the cockroach blowhard of Cleveland radio who has fewer interesting things to say during a show than fingers on his hands, the latter, incidentally, a topic he prefers to discuss with more frequency, but no less unoriginality, than any morsel of sports news.

As bad as Radio Munch is, let me tell you, Blog Munch is worse. The whole blog section of WKNR is a mess in a general sense (specifically, it’s a clusterfuck), but Munch’s entries stand out, which is a testament to something, though probably bad, for both parties.

Munch’s entry Saturday drove me over the edge. Blog Munch apparently learned how to write for the web by studying the MySpace pages of 14-year-old girls.

While you might have come to expect a wanton disregard for stimulating or original discussion on ESPNCleveland.com (Unofficial site motto: News you already know, takes you already heard on the radio, written for the web 24-hours later), Munch’s brazen disregard for the English language makes it impossible to even discover his banal arguments, let alone understand them.

Think I was just making a joke about writing like a teenager on MySpace?

Here, you tell me. This is a random blog post by some girl named Mz. Bootie on Myspace:

DiSz BE A SHOUTOUT TO ALL MA MAiN PEOPLE DAT CARE FA ME!!

HARRY..WOW WHERE DO ii START U MA MAiN PERSON U ALWYSz THERE FA ME WEN ii NEED SUM1 TA TLK TO U GOT MA BAKq N ERYTHANG U MAKE ME SOOO HAPPY U DNT UNDERSTAND THA WAY U MKE ME FEEL…U TREAT ME GUD UR BASiCLY AMAZiN ii MEAN NO MATTA WAT U ALWAYSz MAKE SURE ERYTHANG iSz AiGHT U CARE SOO MUCH BOUT ME MORE DEN NEONE REALLii N ii REALLii APPRiCiATE iT ii KNO NO MATTA WAT U GON ALWAYSz BE THERE FA ME N U ALWAYSz GON MKE ME FEEL GUD.. ii LUV YA!!! <333

And this was Munch’s literary offering on Saturday:

Great Saturday afternoon to YOU C TOWN…you know I love YA’ BIG CITY…how are YOU FRIEND? We need to talk……before we get into Browns Camp Day #1, the Tribe got the job done this week by shipping off JaHonny (that SOB rocked for the Tigers Fri night proving he is a lazy, front runnin’ piece of “dreck”, Wood to NY along with Kearns yesterday and Jake to the Redbirds today! OK, GOOD RIDDANCE TO KERRY”S CASH and he needed save situations to get work, which would NOT happen here! How ’bout Kearns — good for him. He did us GOOD and deserved a shot. Jake was the one I cooled on trading, but again, good luck to him in a GREAT BASEBALL TOWN! Yup, I told ya’ (Like usual!) that he would be fine this year and his “FINE” has given him a legit shot at the playoffs!
Did you note some teams getting stringer here — Yanks leaving nothing to chance, Phils as good as anyone to return to the Series and Texas…Rangers add another bat w/ Pro Hitter Jorge Cantu and Padres get 2 sticks…Ludwick and Tejada! Hmmm…weren’t we supposed to add in ’07, or right after the season?

OK, BROWNS PRACTICE #1 at 76 Lou Groza Blvd! I loved hanging w/ my boys D Ruiter, Reg and Rizz and ALL YOU FANS and here’s what came down, what I saw…

* Full pads!* Loved seeing all players stretching together, even kickers. YES, they are part of 53 man roster!* Of course, NO JOE HADEN but NO MONTERIO HARDESTY? Asked Browns PR types and they said “who” OR “we did not notice!” I even asked for some HBO to no avail as they were doing their jobs! WE do find out later that Hardesty twisted a knee (!!) — working out? — and will miss 2 weeks. What does that mean? RUN GHOST (Harrison) RUN!

* Of course, PUP guys were Rogers (dang is HE big with or without pads), CJ Mosely and Coye Francies!

* Something new I enjoyed seeing on the south of the Casey Coleman Field House – a HUGE banner with a BROWNS helmet reading “Thank you for your support. Cleveland Browns” SUPPORT IT WAS TODAY WITH A RECORD OF OVER 3,000 fans at practice!

* St. Ignatius hoops coach Sean O’Toole was in the house with his sons. Sean IS C TOWN and ALL SPORTS!

* QB’s wore orange, Offense WHITE and Defense BROWN today!

* Music was crankin’ early, before a ball was put into play and yes, when whistles blew, players moved!

* Saw Robert Royal and thought “dang, another physical specimen, but he cannot catch a football.” A few drills later, I was proven right. For every catch, he dropped 2-3 or got the ball knocked from his hands!* Also love the message under the scoreboard on the Casey Coleman Field House that denotes: “THE WILL TO SUCCEED IS NOTHING WITHOUT THE WILL TO PREPARE.”

* GREAT to see RANDY LERNER walking the field wearing a blue polo and khaki slacks. I WANT my owner there. Sure he cares, but good to have him there!* The BIG SHOW was in a golf cart with that orange (!!) cast on his foot from surgery driving it from the passenger side! Gil Haskell was seated with him most of practice and I LOVED seeing GM To Heckert in work out shorts and pull over! YES, a FOOTBALL MAN!

* FINALLY, we had a semblance of REAL FOOTBALL!- WR’s vs DB’s in a pitch drill where the WR was tossed the ball in the backfield w/ 1 other WR blocking and he had to allude the DB!- Pseudo “Tackling” drilll where the WR came full tilt towards the DB’s in a narrow lane and had to cut left. The DB’s had to “2 hand touch them!”* YUP, there were youngsters by the scores asking their Dads and Moms, asking me “where is COLT?” ”I wanna see COLT PLAY!” Here we go…!!!- WE also had the LB’s vs RB’s and as noted, team is DEEP IN LB’S!* Scott Fujita carries himself like a SUPER BOWL WINNER!

That’s 35 exclamation marks, for those of you scoring at home. Those of you counting grammatical mistakes at home will wake up shortly from your apoplectic fit after having reached 100 and continue counting. You will be done tomorrow, maybe.

Bravo to the bosses at WKNR for continuing to publish this on ESPNCleveland.com. The futures of media and journalism in Cleveland are safe in your hands.

Follow me on Twitter: @vincethepolack

This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2010.