I apparently have become the Rick Reilly guy. I think I have dissected every single thing he has written with ESPN. Of course, when it is only 500 words and comes once a week then I don't have that hard of a job. Whoops...I forgot, it is not my job, just a duty I have to help to convince everyone Rick Reilly is a hack with no skills.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3500700
In one stretch this month, Alex Rodriguez's name was on the front page of the New York Post eight days out of twelve. Paparazzi even followed him to Pittsburgh. Who knew life could suck at $27 million a year?
Why did they do this? Anger with A Rod for being the greatest baseball player in Major League Baseball? He had a "kick me" sign on his back and they wanted to see who would do it first? He smells good?
Madonna once said, "I won't be happy until I am more famous than God," but right now A-Rod is probably wishing she wasn't—and that he'd gone into dentistry.
That's right, he was cheating on his wife with one of the most famous, and incredibly overrated, pop stars of all time. I am not sure if this paparazzi invasion is a result of his life sucking or the result of the best baseball player in the the most talented filled major baseball league in the world and one of the most famous pop stars having an affair. I will let the reader decide.
Does anyone get the feeling Reilly has nothing he can write about so he just kills time for a little while and only has one paragraph that has any journalistic credibility in each column, then immediately after that paragraph he gets back to killing time until he can end the column with a snappy one liner? I am on to him.
By the way, what the hell is this column about?
I knew exactly how he felt. People constantly think I'm somebody else.
It is about himself apparently.
I like to imagine the posting for a columnist job at ESPN looks like this:
Major sports news organization looking for talented columnist to write once a week. No sports experience necessary but must think the world revolves around him/her and display no regard for journalistic standards. This includes the following:
-Displaying no knowledge of topic writing about
-Doing zero research to learn more about a topic
-Talking about his/her personal life (making up a life is perfectly fine, just must seem realistic to the readers)
-Must be willing to make an ass of him/her self on television when needed
-Needs to think the reading/viewing audience is as dumb as they are
-Columns must inflame hatred of some group at some point, so columnist must be willing to be controversial in talking about subject matter. Just don't talk about us in a negative manner or you will be fired.
Please send resumes with cover letters and personal references to human resources.
At this year's U.S. Open in San Diego, for instance, I was minding my own business, walking and eating a ham sandwich, when a thirtysomething man with caterpillar eyebrows suddenly stepped in front of me, clomped two meaty hands on my shoulders and yelped, "Oh … my … God!"
Caterpillar eyebrows and two meaty hands? This must be a middle class citizen who works for a living! I have heard about these before, they pay attention to sports closely, yet don't have the money to go to all sporting events, so when this type person gets to go to an event they get excited. I was not aware these people still existed.
"I can't believe it's you!" he gushed. "Well," I said, "I'm not really all that…"
Modesty does not do Reilly well. You know he was really thinking, "Holy shit, I am so talented and someone knows who I am."
"Your book changed my life!" he roared.
"Really? Because I don't really write the kind…"
Reilly's brain was really wondering which insightful column it was. The one about parachuting, parasailing, riding in a race car, hanging out with athletes, or the one about Charles Barkley's swing.
"Tuesdays with Morrie! Greatest book ever written!"
"Didn't write it pal," I snipped. "Wish I had." (I meant it. It sold more than 12 million copies.)
I think everyone should send book ideas like "Tuesdays with Morrie" to the web site Rick Reilly set up immediately after this conversation. http://www.iamafuckingdouchebagandshouldbestabbedwithasaladfork.org/
(Turned out Bill Simmons took the .com site)
At the recent Lake Tahoe golf tournament, I was walking through a gauntlet of autograph seekers—unbothered and unmolested—when a tall, saucer-eared man in his fifties thrust a blue Sharpie and a program in front of me.
As you stated earlier, they did not molest you because no one knows who you fucking are. Saucer-eared man? God, I wish someone would take you outside and just beat the shit out of you with a totem pole, then you can write about it in "Life or Reilly," and get sympathy.
Sigh. I signed my name over Rhoden's face and left it at that.
People call me a different name all day. I am neither famous nor have a difficult name. So you would probably need to excuse this guy when he confuses you with someone else and not mock him.
The other day a blogger wrote the most amazing email to me regarding the column I wrote about the recent passing of my father, Jack Reilly. The piece included a picture of the two of us at my wedding in 1983.
Positive mail? I don't believe it.
"I have good reason to believe," this guy wrote, "that the man in the picture is, in fact, golf commentator Bob Rosburg. What I'm trying to figure out is why you would do this."
The guy is an idiot, I think that is clear. I am not sure if you have been outside at all lately but the earth is full of morons and some of them know how to write. You may need to get used to this if you are going to keep your job.
What I was trying to figure out is how I could find this hairball and pull his spleen out with corn tongs.
What this guy should be doing, now that you have publicly mocked his "amazing email," is find you and puncture every single one of the tires on the Merecedes S Class you most likely drive and spray pain "what the fuck are corn tongs" on the hood. By the way, Rick Reilly just semi-threatened one of his own readers.
I wrote him and suggested that he borrow, steal or purchase a life.
How big of a douchebag is Rick Reilly? Think about this...How many of our 3 readers have written to a national columnist and told them they have written a good column or they enjoyed something he/she had written? I personally have at one time or another. How many of the comments written to the columnist have been answered in an email response? Zero for me. You figure it is because the person is busy, so you excuse it. Not Rick Reilly, he is never too busy to write a loyal reader who enjoyed a personal story of Reilly's to tell him how stupid that person is.
The capper, though, was Katie Couric, late of the Today show. I was in the green room, waiting to go on and plug a book, when she came running up to me like a long-lost sister, 1,000-watt smile and open arms.
I am a little confused as to how the capper happened before the other two events. I am pretty sure Katie Couric was on the Today show before the other two events happened. I guess in the Life of Reilly there is no such thing as time.
"I'm really looking forward to our segment!" she said. "I loved it as a kid! Do you have the recipe?"
"Yes! No. What?"
"The recipe! Which recipe will we be making?"
"Uh, no. I'm a sportswriter. I really don't do, uh, recipes."
"You're not the Easy-Bake oven guy?"
"No, sorry."
Let me get this shit straight. You mean she was going to interview you on national television to give you a forum to make more money for yourself through book sales and had the audacity to not know exactly who you were? What a bitch. I am sure she does not meet that many people in one day, even though she is more famous than you. I bet this pissed Reilly off so much he never even did the show. Actually he did the show, he is just that much of a tool.
Eat your heart out, Alex.
I wish a bear would eat your heart out.
Love the column, hate the column, got a better idea? Go here.
How do you better a column where the columnist talks about how not famous he is, and couches it in terms that people should really know who he is? The answer is, you can't.
Want more Life of Reilly?
I want more Death of Reilly if he is not going to talk about anything other than himself.
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