Saturday, April 01, 2006

In Which DCAT References Poop and Bill Simmons

Probably because I am immature, I found the following funny, as in beer bubbling out the nose funny. I don't know why, and I don't know if I want to know, but an email from Sportsguy's latest Mailbag made me laugh for about five minutes:
Q: In your previous mailbag, Bob from Atlanta states that your book is 189 poops long. I have to call BS on this. First of all, who keeps track of such a stat? But beyond that, your book hit stores Oct. 1, 2005. That's only like 150 odd days. And I doubt he read at every stop. Plus there's no way he double dipped on enough days to cover the difference. This guy is the James Frey of poop stories. Take your 189 poops and go home Bob.
-- Kris, Franklin, Mass.

If you are not laughing out loud right now, I do not want to know you. A well crafted poop story is always worth the price of admission, especially when it is a story in which the very legitimacy of someone else's poop is in question.


(By the way, why is it that we all have something to say about the regional variances in how someone refers to carbonated beverages -- "coke," "pop" "soda" [the last being the only acceptable usage -- ED.] -- and yet I am always a bit shocked when my girlfriend says "doodies"? I grew up in a doodie-free zone. The prevalent word for me as a kid was always "caca" which stems from some Romanian derivation -- my Papa had a scatological streak in him, as one of our dogs on the farm, my little brother's nickname, and of course any of his responses to one or another dubious assertion any of us ever made resulted in one of an apparent cornucopia of Romanian words for "s#!%")


I am pretty certain that no one in the blogosphere has been as big a Simmons advocate as I. But I also have to admit that I think that he is losing his fastball a little bit. The very writing style that can make me giggle like a school girl also can grow tedious. Bill Simmons is an entertaining writer. But the more of him that I read, I'm not convinced that he is a GOOD writer. He has a discernible style, yet he is not a great stylist. His pop culture references have not only grown to feel perfunctory, but he has spawned a generation of followers who think that immitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I nudge because I love -- when he is on, Simmons is as good as there is. But in the last two years, we have seen a lot less of the good Sportsguy and a lot more of the one who thinks that a well-timed Shawshank allusion substitutes for substantial content.

2 comments:

Ken said...

I'm glad you said that. I think he's one of the most hit-and-miss sportswriters there is. So you read him regularly, because you don't want to miss the great bits. But you never know if he's going to strike out or not. Which gets frustrating after a while.

That said, a lot of his "Curious Guy" stuff is superb, and shows how good his understanding of sports is.

dcat said...

Ken --
The worst thing that happened to Sportsguy is developing a cult around himself that allows him to get away with the same old pop-culture references that get old. When he is on he is absolutely on. But he has established for himself an insular world, because of the feedback he gets from guys desperate to sound enough like him to get into his Mailbags.
I do like Curious Guy, I also like the More Cowbell, and the intern was always entertaining.

dcat