Simmons Cliff Notes

. . . but . . . like The Dwarf . . . it really wasn't certified until HE wrote about it.

 

Same here. He pulls some decent guests and ain't half bad at guessing the NFL lines.

 

And his schtick is much better in a conversational style, rather than just words on the page. He may be a limited writer, but he's a clever, funny dude, and it comes through much better in the podcasts, despite his made-for-print voice. I think it would be fun to hang out with him and Jack-O if they could stay away from the in-jokes.

 

Simmons podcasts are about the only way I get through the long drives to football games on my beats. Well, that and road head.

 

Whatever gets you through, brutha.

 

I don't like arguments based exclusively on conjecture and assumptions.

"You just KNOW he'd have carried the Sox."

"Everyone can just safely assume that _____."

I like a lot of Simmons' stuff -- mostly his NBA, and some of his fantasy stuff. But this? He makes a few salient arguments about how Theo also quit on the team, but he just repeats himself an awful lot. Hell, how many times can you bring up the idea that 'Manny left uncashed paychecks in his locker'? Hell, can we even verify this?

 

If there's one good thing about Simmons is that he knows his NBA. Of course, as a Laker fan I knew I'd have to avoid his column during the Finals.

 

I really, really liked the look of that page. That's not really saying much because I'm clueless when it comes to Web design, but the first thing I said when I clicked on that page was "Wow, this looks really sharp."

 

Footnotes in a sports article should earn a writer an editor's foot way, way, up his ass.

 

Halfway through the piece, you realize you're on the journalistic equivalent of the Bridge to Nowhere. Never has a writer taken so long to say so little.

 

I really liked the look of that page ... so long as I'm not reading the article. Which I didn't. If I were reading it, I'd have given up after the second batch of footnotes, because it completely breaks up the story (and not in a good way.) Makes it too hard to read.

And I understand his style is to be wordy, which is fine and it's brought him success, but seriously, man: learn to self-edit. You're going to write 10,000 words or whatever ... AND use footnotes? On a topic that you've probably written a million words about in the last five years? Jesus. You can't make judgment calls about what's important enough to include in a 10,000-word epic ... so you have to add MORE, and break them out as footnotes? Holy, holy fuck.

(Mind you, this is coming from a guy who just submitted a 10K-word biography with 150 citations/footnotes to an editor last week ... not newspapers, of course. NO one needs to do that for yet another rehash of Manny Being Manny. Damn.)