Blogs – Regular Guy

You Just Have To

brian — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:56:12 +0000

I hate the phrase “have to” as in “you have to watch this show” or “you have to find this funny.” A former co-worker would always respond to comments like that with a surly, “I don’t have to do anything.” I came to adopt that philosophy, if only to upset those who get personally wounded if I have my own opinion on things.

That said, you have to read Deadspin today. If you like baseball or humor or kittens or references to the hands of six-week-old fetusus, you just have to indulge in the goodness of the FJM reunion.

What is an FJM reunion, you might ask? FJM is short for Fire Joe Morgan, a web site dedicated to eviscerating people will silly theories about baseball. What makes the site – which has been dormant for a while – so great is that it is not run by the mythical “guy living in his Mom’s basement.” In fact, one of the main writers is Mose Schrute.

Mose is better known as Michael Schur, a writer from “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation,” who also portrayed the brother cousin of Dwight Schrute in “The Office. Other contributors were Alan Yang and Dave King, also TV writers. The blog pretty much ended because of their workloads, particularly Schur’s when “Parks and Recreation,” which he co-created, got started.

But Deadspin has brought them back for a day. Revel in the snark. Enjoy the evisceration of Murray Chass. Laugh as they compare Jesus to Derek Jeter. You just have to.

Ain’t She Tweet

brian — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:41:22 +0000

Will Leitch, normally known for his snarkiness at the great sports blog Deadspin, has a great article about Twitter at New York Magazine, where he serves as a contributing editor.

The piece really comes to no conclusions, but features some interesting observations about the site. I have had a Twitter account for a few months now and have mixed feelings about the service. It’s kind of cool to follow updates from some people and organizations, but it also seems silly a lot of times, especially since some people – and I am guilty of this – use Twitter to update their Facebook status. I follow some of the same people on both sites so it’s kind of redundant.

As Leitch compares and contrasts Twitter with the late 1990s tech companies that imploded, he also also looks at how the sharing of information has changed.

Are we really becoming a nation of people who reflexively share information with everyone the minute we have it? We might be. Twitter has no choice but to hope so. They might be right.

Leitch goes to examine how the plane crash in the Hudson proved this as eyewitnesses provided “tweets” with information and photos almost right away. The article then goes on to examine the difficulty of that turning into a money-making venture.

My one complaint about the article is that Leitch has, at his fingertips, an example of why Twitter faces an uphill climb. Sure, a guy used Twitter to circulate a pretty powerful photo of passengers waiting to get rescued from the Hudson River. The picture got lots of publicity, but no one made any money.

Just a few weeks later, a guy (or woman, not sure) sold a photo of Michael Phelps taking bong hit in South Carolina. Again, lots of publicity, but also a financial transaction. While a bunch of us might be sharing info virtually, there is still something to be said about good old-fashioned newspapers, even those who sleazily pay for photos to stir some controversy.

Like Leitch, I have rambled (although not as eloquently) and don’t have much of a point except that Twitter really does have an uphill climb, but it is completely out of their hands. They can try and develop a revenue model to make money, but there are existing technologies, some of them really old, which already have that going for them.

Goodnight, Sweet Blog

brian — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:23:41 +0000

I am a bad blog reader. Sure, I have a Google Reader page with my favorite blog feeds, but I get behind and just end up skimming. That especially happens with my favorite sports blogs because they just crank out so much material, I just end up reading headlines and looking at pics of pretty women.

With the news this week that Fire Joe Morgan had decided to hang it up, I really feel bad about not giving them more of my time. You don’t appreciate the great ones until they’re gone.

I had only been following FJM for less than a year. I think I took notice when the authors shed the cloak of anonymity and the world found out that Mose Schrute was one of the authors. Each time these successful Hollywood writers made fun of a sports writer who was so lazy that they claimed bloggers wrote from their parents’ basement, I fell in love with them a little more.

I don’t watch very much baseball these days, especially Sunday Night Baseball. I can’t stand Joe Morgan and Jon Miller, even though Miller was such a part of my younger days as the Orioles’ announcer. They just drive me nuts.

So to find a blog that would mine their work for stupidity and make fun of it for me, I though I had dies and gone to heaven. Their dissection of Joe’s mindless online chats was some of the funniest stuff I have ever read. The fact that they created such an entertaining blog without posting millions of links or scantily clad women just goes to show how good they really were.

But now they are gone. I curse their Hollwyood success. It has killed one of the great sports blogs.

Let’s Have Some Fun Out Here!

brian — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:16:26 +0000

I don’t know who to blame for not letting the Buzz Bissinger-Will Leitch “debate” die. Bissinger hasn’t shut up, trying to explain over and over again that his point still stands, but he shouldn’t have been such a dick. I say, if you have to be such a dick in the first place, it kind of kills your point, but who am I?

Some of Bissinger’s friends have weighed in, repeating the blogs are bad because they aren’t professional while showing a lack of professionalism by not doing a good job researching the topic. For instance, Leonard Shapiro of the Washington Post defended Bissinger, including more complaining about blog commenters.

Bissinger and Shapiro and their buddies are so worried about how blog commenters – which are really just the guys from the bar with computer access – are bringing down society with rude and profane discussion. I just wonder why don’t they take a few minutes to praise sites like Fire Joe Morgan, which includes little commentary and all of it submitted via e-mail so the bloggers (which include Michael Shur, a writer and producer for “The Office” and the guy who plays Mose Schrute on the show).

I guess it’s easier to blast the commenters instead of showing that there are lots of different blogs. Sure, they now know enough to say you can’t speak about blogs generally, but then they do it anyway, ignoring the ones that disprove their negative point.

At the same time, the bloggers and commenters continue to respond, some of them in a really negative tone. But Christmas Ape, aka Michael Tunison who lost his job at the Post because of his blogging at Kissing Suzy Kolber, makes perhaps the best point of all at Deadspin, one which Bissinger and Shapiro will never get.

… haven’t many already made the claim that our culture’s obsession with sports alone is evidence enough of a “dumbing down”? My opinion is that sports is entertainment first, no matter how much significance you wish to attach to it.

The fact that we’re talking about how people write about sports has never really entered the conversation here. It’s sports, for God’s sake. Games and how we perceive them. If we can’t have some fun talking about athletics, what’s the point? Sports bloggers aren’t dumbing down society. They just realize that taking the act of men chasing a ball around a field too seriously is just laughable.

You’re a Grown Man Named Buzz and You Want to Lecture Me?

brian — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:27:49 +0000

First of all, the above video (H/T Awful Announcing) is not safe for kids or an open workplace. Lots of naughty, naughty language, most of it ironically coming from the guy who has jumped on his high horse about decency.

That guy is Buzz Bissinger. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the book “Friday Night Lights,” yet I had never heard of him until this week. That might make me a bad sports fan, a bad aspiring author, a bad father, I don’t know. But he seems suitably impressed by himself so I guess all of us are supposed to follow suit.

Buzz appeared as part of a panel (i.e. lynching) about sports blogs. Will Leitch from Deadspin (hear a fantastic interview with Will on Wings for Wheels here) had the difficult job of sitting next to Bissinger and getting lectured by a man who still seems pissed off because women are allowed in the locker room or something of that sort.

Lots of other sites have said more eloquent things than I can on this topic. OK, the last one wasn’t eloquent, but funny (and rude and crude). I only have two points I think people need to think about as aging writers rail about bloggers without knowing anything about bloggers.

First of all, I wouldn’t have nearly as much interest in sports as I do today without blogs like Deadspin, Awful Announcing, The Big Lead, KSK, With Leather, Fire Joe Morgan and many of the other fine sites that scare the living crap out of columnists and talking heads. I’m college-educated and have dedicated much of my free time to sports, but they just became less important as I got real jobs with real responsibility and started a family. ESPN and newspapers just didn’t always fit my need, but blogs do. They are timely, yet timeless. They update all day, but I can read them whenever I want. Sure, they use pictures of hot chicks, rely on dick jokes for a lot of humor, and focus on everything except the games at times. It’s that warped perspective and sense of humor which bring me to the table. Buzz has a serious sense of humor deficit, which is a terrible, terrible thing to suffer through life with. Laugh once in a while, Buzz. It’s OK.

My second point is that Bissinger and Bob Costas rail on and on about blog commenters, not the blog posts themselves. Well, those commenters are the sports fans who people like Costas and Bissinger look down upon from their lofty perch. People have been saying bad things about athletes and commentators for ever, but now they finally have a voice. Is it intelligent or politically correct or decent? Hell, no. But blog comments strike a chord for every fan cut off on sports radio, every fan who doesn’t get to tell columnists like Jay Mariotti he’s full of shit, and every fan who sits in a bar or lounge and talks about their favorite (or least favorite) team.

I think some of those fans are idiots, but they have a right to be idiots and that’s one reason why I love blogs. It’s not one-way communication. It’s 100-way communication, letting the fans and writers actually exchange ideas. And that’s a hell of a lot more relevant than Mike Lupica being a dick to his peers on The Sports Reporters.