Drew Magary on graduation speakers

I'm usually no huge fan of Deadspin, but this one cracked me up.

http://deadspin.com/5798633/a-special-graduation-message-to-the-class-of-2011

I particularly loved this paragraph:

Success stories are boring, pointless, enraging, and almost always gloss over the most critical details of a person's success. "After graduating from Harvard, I bummed around for a bit. Then, I managed to get a writing job over at Saturday Night Live…" Wait, what? WHAT THE FUCK?! How the fuck did that just happen? People spend entire lives trying to land that kind of job, and you just got it? I FUCKING HATE YOU NOW.

So true. I don't know how many times I've been reading an interview with a successful person - typically a journalist - and it goes something like this:

"Well, I graduated from State U, then I was able to land a job covering the Russia-Afghanistan war in the mid-'80s."

You see it a lot in coach stories, too. This week's Sports Illustrated piece on the Bulls has Tom Thibodeau going from Division III to Harvard to ... the Knicks! All in, like, three sentences. No thang.

 

Yeah, I read that a couple weeks ago. I like Magary's writing, since he writes how I talk, but I find it better in things like the mailbag or the drunken hookup failures than long rants.

 

I agree. The rant here starts to go on and on about how people should spend more time thinking (i.e. "doing nothing") than burning the midnight oil (i.e. "doing something"). A lot of funny passages in search of a better delivery system.

But the paragraph above about success stories just really struck me because I've read/heard something like that a million times.

 

Big fan of his yearly graduation speeches. Bigger fan, like IJAG, of his funbag and DHF. Will probably end up buying and reading his book this fall.

Magary is the latest Five for Writing or whatever it's called on Jones' blog.

 

DHF is appointment reading for me every Friday afternoon.

 

I lost my virginity when I was 14, my college professor told me it's OK to end a sentence with a preposition and yada yada yada I solved the problem of cold fusion

At.

 

Not a big fan of Deadpsin, but he hit the nail on the head of what goes on my mind WAY too much. I always wonder how Bill Simmons got so huge (never heard any of his background) or how Peter King became a football guru. I have heard Mike Wilbon's story of somehow getting into the Washington Post and then being so impressive, the rest was history.

I want to be THAT guy. Damn.

 

I was kind of cynical when I heard Magary was going to be a regular on the Sports Reporters, but he's really grown on me as a radio guy.

 

It's kind of like how Mel Kiper has the best racket in the history of rackets: He's a "master" of an imperfect "science," the NFL Draft. So it doesn't matter if he's right or wrong, he cashes in either way.

 

I've always liked the graduation speech Bruce Dern gave in Middle Age Crazy.

 

Pattern for all graduation speakers:
*valedictorian* Insert quote from someone else, harsh segue into how this quote apples to their lives and by their lives, only the popular people. More memories that the normal kids can't releate to and close with a quote that someone else said you make you feel smart.

*guest speaker* Story of why he/she is better than you, what you can do to be better, but won't actually accomplish. Insert quote from someone else to sound pithy and close with a cliche.

 

You, sir, are a stone-cold badass. You just happened to stumble across the what's-it-called on that one dude's blog, but realized it would take a real doof to remember the name of the running feature, so you only kinda paid attention. Five for Writing? Hmm, sounds rightish enough. But no sense checking, 'cause of you're above it. I like it. I like it a lot.