Let's just dive right in.
Q: There had to be someone out there who was watching "Titanic" for the first time when TNT switched to the Red Sox-Angels Game 3, right? I mean, there was a half-hour left! Even if you already saw the movie you just sat through 2½ hours and got abruptly thrown to Ernie Johnson.-- Mick, Sacramento
Clearly, this is a made up email. Assuming it is not a made up email we all know what is coming next. Bill is going to try and top this email with his own observation, making him smarter and more witty...which is why Jimmy Kimmel fired him.
I was trying to think of a Bizarro Situation for this and here it is: If you were watching "Hoosiers" on ESPN Classic, Flatch just got thrown into the trophy case and Ollie was coming in … and right at that moment, Pam Ward was staring at you and saying, "Sorry to interrupt, we're throwing it to Detroit for bonus coverage of the WNBA semifinals."
(Bill's brain): Let's throw together one of your favorite movies and something you always make fun of, the readers will LOVE that! Hmmm...let's see Karate Kid or Hoosiers and the WNBA or Joseph John Harrington? I will go with Hoosiers and the WNBA. Not only is that hilarious but also very creative. I am so smart!
Q: Did you see the record for most on-screen analysts get shattered by CNN after the Palin-Biden debate? On "Anderson Cooper 360," there were 11 men and women on stage with laptops in front of them. Beat that, NBC!-- Andrew W., New York
SG: Just wait until Dick Ebersol finishes his "Hollywood Squares" set for NBC's "Football Night in America." You will regret challenging him.
Fuck you Andrew from New York, Bill is funnier.
P.S.: You know, this isn't a terrible idea -- a pregame show crossed with a game show.
You mean the very idea you just thought of you don't think is a terrible idea? I don't believe this, this shocking new development.
The scary thing is, I think I would watch this. Like, every week.
We know you would watch your fake what you think is a very good idea Bill. All of Bill's ideas are all wonderful, so why would everyone not watch?
Q: Hi, my name is Kristy, and I am a Reader Mailbag Virgin. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, will the glory days of the "one star running back system" ever return? I miss the days of a healthy LT, the pre-prison Jamal Lewis era and Priest Holmes.-- Kristy, Scottsdale, Ariz.
I am not saying this is a fake email from a fake person. I am saying the odds of this being a real email are not high. This is just a chance for Bill to say "there are so many cool girls that read my columns from all over the country. I am hip." Also, by saying the word hip, Bill would not be.
SG: Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to my second wife … Kristy from Scottsdale!
If she exists she is probably much too cool for you Bill and like the average American, would grow tired of the same act you have after about one year. Then she would divorce you and take 50% of your money, including all of the profits from your second Boston area related book, which would give you new material to complain about in your columns, and might make you seem like you are not becoming stale. I don't think you would want to take that chance that you would have to find something new to talk about.
Simmer down.
Q: Can you give us your guess on the breakdown of Red Sox vs. Rays fans at the ALCS games in Tampa? My roommate and I think everyone is missing the boat on this one; it's our secret weapon in the series.-- Jack, Medford, Mass.
"Our?" Jack must play for the Red Sox! Just kidding, I am being an asshole. I think the real advantage the Red Sox is that they have a superior team.
SG: I would have guessed 25 percent, but I have Florida friends who swear the number will be closer to 40-45 percent. You're right, it's definitely an ace in the hole for the Sox,
This is really kind of odd. In every poll I have ever seen the most popular teams in the United States are usually the Yankees, Braves, Red Sox, Cubs, and Mets, but there are always a ton of Red Sox fans in the crowd when I watch a game on television, no matter where they go. When I watch other games on television, there are some fans of the road team in the stands, but not nearly as much as 25%. I realize Red Sox fans "travel well" but I always have wondered how it could be the Red Sox are not the most popular team in the country and yet they always have fans in the stands at games. Does Boston suck that much to live in, do the fans just show up for the games because they are so dedicated, or is there some other reason they have fans in the crowd during other cities?...like the fans just recently chose to like the Red Sox. This is always interesting to me.
Q: I love your columns. They're so fantastically asinine and informative at the same time. I enjoy almost everything you write. Yet, I envy you, and because of that, I hate you.-- Huy, Irvine, Calif.
I did a google search on Huy from Irvine, California and the only ones that really show up are attorneys and doctors of various professions. Not that they would not envy Bill, but they are doctors and attorneys, so they probably have better things to do than envy Bill.
If this was a real email then this must have really brightened Bill's day because somebody was massaging his ego and telling him how special is. His ego loves things like this.
SG: Hate me, love me, I don't care.
Says the man who's columns scream, "I am hip, cool, and relevant, please think that I am that way, and I will prove it to you by using pop culture and cracking jokes everyone can understand. Though I am as edgy as a dull knife and pick fights with people like Dane Cook and an elderly sportscaster with my favorite baseball team, don't think about it too much. Remember Hoosiers and Karate Kid? They were awesome and so am I. Right?"
Q: I just watched Manny Ramirez tell the TBS announcer to "talk to Scott because he's the one who brought me to Los Angeles" in his post-Game 3 interview. Can you please add this to your Manny column as the 40th footnote and add a line like, "I TOLD YOU!"-- Robby, Los Angeles (by way of Boston)
SG: I'm more partial to, "And you thought I spent 9,200 words making this up."
My head is spinning right now. Other than Bill got an email from Robby, another Red Sox fan who lives in California, I would also like to point out I still think Bill made up Scott Boras is the main reason Manny left California.
I would also like to know when Bill and Robby (by way of Boston) started taking anything Manny said seriously? Also, it is well known that Scott Boras convinced Manny to go to California when the trade was being discussed, not as part of a master plan, but what Manny meant was that Boras convinced him there were millions of Latinos in Los Angeles, which was important to Manny, as Bill said himself in his Manny column.
Q: On behalf of every Eagles fan, can you please be the one media guy who doesn't suck up to Andy Reid and point out all the reasons why he sucks and needs to either resign or start smoking? The man either needs more oxygen or more nicotine. Thanks in advance.-- Randy, South Philly
I certainly can't believe a Philadelphia fan is throwing a good player/coach under the bus for no real good reason. Charles Barkley, Donovan McNabb, and Allen Iverson are also shocked. The Eagles have won games and made the playoffs with McNabb out for the season, their starting running back always hurt, and a complete lack of wide receivers (except one year, Terrell Owens), and yet still the Eagle fans want to get rid of him.
SG: I'd be delighted! Reid is like Art Shell with a better PR staff. He makes terrible decisions at the worst possible times.
I agree some of his decisons are stupid periodically but many NFL teams wish they had as much success as the Eagles have had.
Q: O.J. Simpson getting convicted … biggest makeup call ever?-- Jon, Boston
Jon from Boston, clearly a racist, and clearly the one person in the world the Jemele Hill shit column was talking about.
SG: Unquestionably. It's amazing Ed Hochuli wasn't involved.Ok, two people Jemele Hill was speaking to with that column.
I think he's clutch. It was just funny to see him pull that face out again Thursday night -- it was like getting farted on by an old roommate from college or something.)
Bill is talking about Derek Lowe here. I bet his college roommates "farted" on him. They would come home late at night and "fart" at each other.
And no, I am not suggesting Bill is a closet homosexual who got married and had children to cover this fact up, I am suggesting if it were true he would give all closet homosexuals a bad name and the fact he has something in common with them would cause them to shudder.
Q: Where were you and what were you doing this summer when you found out Billy Packer no longer worked for CBS Sports?-- Trent T., Burbank, Calif.
SG: You mean, July 14, 2008 … or as it will be known from this point forward, Curmudgeon Liberation Day? I don't even remember. I just remember briefly blacking out from joy.
Oh Bill, so late to the party and yet so willingly to act like he has been there all of the time. It's like all he knows about college basketball is to bash Duke and Billy Packer. Here he chooses Billy Packer to mock but has no memories of Packer bashing ANY ACC team because he is still bitter Wake Forest was the only team to recruit him. The only thing all fans of ACC teams can agree on is how much they hate Billy Packer.
I just find Bill discussing college basketball to be insufferable.
Q: As much as I hate Boston fans, I must admit that they scream "OOOOOOoooooh!" louder than any fans in all of baseball on two-strike pitches that are three feet off the plate.-- Matt, Wichita, Kan.
They scream it louder than any other fan base for two reasons:
1. They know nothing about baseball and don't understand what is going on, simply because they have never watched any baseball until 2004.
2. There is no other reason...
(I apologize to the Boston reader(s), Bill causes me to do this...all this anger is not healthy)
Nearly every time Big Papi steps out of the batter's box, he spits into his hands and claps twice. Well, why wouldn't the Fenway fans clap twice at the same time? Maybe the double clap could turn his playoffs around. If Big Papi isn't hitting, the Red Sox aren't beating Tampa.
Because this would be stupidier than thunder bats, excessive pitching changes to do lefty-lefty/righty-righty matchups, and the person who hired you. This idea would be beyond dumb, which I am not sure what is beyond this level of stupidity. If I created a level of stupidity, then this would be very high among it.
Q: How many more times are we going to be subjected to Tito Francona's bonehead decisions? He is great at managing players' egos and building relationships with them, but please get him a coach to do the X's and O's before he kills us. We can't keep overcoming his major screwups, can we? I've said it since 2004 and it is still true … just amazing we keep winning despite him. I set the over/under of his ALCS miscues at four!-- Randy, Derry, N.H.
This person is clearly a new baseball fan who does not understand the game. Three things tip me off on this:
1. The use of "we," Randy needs to feel like he belongs because he does not feel like he does because he was so late to the game.
2. He uses the term "X's and O's" which I have never heard used in terms of baseball, so he probably does not know it is not used in this context often.
3. Randy has said since 2004 they win despite Tito Francona, like he has noticed this all along. Well, that was the year Francona was hired, so you would not have gotten a chance to say it prior to that. That tells me Randy became a Red Sox fan in 2004 and knows nothing about what happened before this time.
I hope Bill bitch slaps him.
thSG: You can read more of Randy's work at his "Mr. Ungrateful" blog. Here's my take on Tito: He has never been outmanaged in a playoff series; his players love him and play hard for him; he handles the media as deftly as anyone this side of Doc Rivers; and by all accounts, he's a genuinely good person. You're never going to find a perfect manager or coach. That person just doesn't exist. So if you had your druthers (love that word), you'd want your manager's biggest weakness to be, "makes some occasionally boneheaded decisions that rarely come back to haunt the team because of the horseshoe that was surgically inserted into his rear end during e '04 playoffs." He's certainly the best Red Sox manager of my lifetime.
This was real Red Sox fan putting a bandwagon fan in his true place. I am glad we got to hear Bill do this.
(Random thought: I also think Julius Peppers has a gambling problem. That would explain his mysterious bad year last year and the fact he is always the best at tackling the QB after he has thrown a pass and can't seem to block the pass down either even though he is 6 foot 7 inches. He is probably deeply indebted to gamblers while he was at North Carolina and now he is paying the debt back by sandbagging in the NFL.)
Q: I was telling my girlfriend about the Manny-Sox dynamic and the potential for a Dodgers/Red Sox World Series and she mentioned that in "A League of Their Own" the team traded the cranky younger sister because of the stressful clubhouse dynamic, and that the rival team ultimately prevailed because of this. I thought, "My God, I must tell Simmons." Please tell me this isn't an applicable analogy, or some way we can stop it.-- Joe the Guy, Boston
I find it remarkable that there is actually people who read Bill Simmons' articles and feel the need to tell him things that happened in their day to day life, as if they know him personally. I guess that is his draw. This is just bizarre to me.
Q: Is the hottest new NFL phrase "dink and dunk?" I heard nearly every pre-post-halftime show use this phrase on three different channels.-- KT, New York
SG: Yup, it's replaced "running downhill" as the signature annoying phrase of 2008 … at least so far, since there's still time for "pick-six" to overtake it. Which reminds me, I nominated "T.I.N.T" (touchdown interception) to replace pick-six two weeks ago and some astute readers pointed out that I could tweak that to "T.A.I.N.T" (touchdown after interception). You have to admit, that couldn't work better. Jon Kitna threw two taints today. Brett Favre leads active QBs with 28 career taints.
These phrases really do all annoy me. What else annoys me is that I use a term called an "STD" which stands for Super Touchdown and it happens when a touchdown turns the game around and you know a team is not going to come back from it. I know have too much in common with a Bill Simmons reader and Bill himself. I am going to be sick.
I think I had better stop here.
SG: Yup, these are my readers
Yup, I wish I had a catchphrase that did not begin with the word "fuck" when talking about Bill Simmons.
"They scream it louder than any other fan base for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1. They know nothing about baseball and don't understand what is going on, simply because they have never watched any baseball until 2004."
Its not all of us, but I think you pegged a decent majority of them. So no need to apologize. Box of spicy hot cheezits says, in 4 years a good amount of bandwagon red sox fans will have no idea who the fuck Keith Foulke is. He will be to bandwagon Boston fans, what John Wetteland is to bandwagon yankees fans.
That was directed towards the bandwagon fans. I try so hard not to do blanket Red Sox fan bashing and stick to the bandwagoneers, but it does not always work.
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel though, I always get shit for my favorite college basketball team, so I know how annoying it is. Real Red Sox fans are just annoying because their team keeps winning, while bandwagonism of any type just annoys the hell out of me. I actually cheered for the Red Sox in 2004 to win the World Series and then it all became too much for me when everyone became a fan. It's how I felt about the Yankees in the 90's except two World Series defeats made it more personal.
I will take the box of hot and spicy cheez-its the bandwagoneers won't know who Keith Foulke is or how they Red Sox tried a bullpen by committee. That is what those who have been fans more than a couple of years will know.
You are too cordial to be a Red Sox fan, you need to start blasting me.