There are times when I think to myself, "I could write for a living. I can identify the heart of an issue better than most people. I can bring a fresh, candid, entertaining perspective to stuff like this. I can do this."
And then there are times when I read something like this, and throw my hands up in the air. Thank you, Chuck, thank you right to hell for ruining my life. How do I improve on that? He says just about everything there is to say about the situation that hasn't been said yet. Worst of all, he makes it look so simple, so obvious. Why would anyone have to be told all that? Dammit. I guess I'll just stick to making fat jokes about El Bastardo Muy Gordo.
And then there are times when I read something like this, and throw my hands up in the air. Thank you, Chuck, thank you right to hell for ruining my life. How do I improve on that? He says just about everything there is to say about the situation that hasn't been said yet. Worst of all, he makes it look so simple, so obvious. Why would anyone have to be told all that? Dammit. I guess I'll just stick to making fat jokes about El Bastardo Muy Gordo.
posted by Jeff at
3:14 PM
1 Comments:
Klosterman's a real talent. He might be pretty hard to compete against, column for column, over the course of a writing career. Fortunately, that is extremely rare in the world of sports writing. Take, for example, this excruciating mess of an article.
Really, though, don't read it. It's terribleness is not interesting in any way, except in that it's entirely indicative of how terrible these things are generally. I know this surprises no one, but I wanted to take the time to rant about this particular quote:
Known as Agent Zero because of his icy demeanor, particularly at the end of games, Arenas has become one of the most complete players in the league. Besides his scoring, he averages 5.9 assists, 4.8 rebounds and 1.9 steals. Though he is not yet at the MVP level of Phoenix’s Steve Nash and Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki, the fact he has the historically moribund Wizards (36-29) in first place in the Atlantic Division puts him not far behind.
Like I said, totally, unremarkably bad. In the span of three sentences, the guy manages to quote a few statistics that anyone could look up in three seconds and more or less arbitrarily compare Arenas to Nash and Nowitzki and find him lacking, no matter that they're three absurdly different styles of player. What is it with journalists just getting to declare this kind of thing anyway? Shouldn't they have to cite some kind of authority on the subject? Lord knows it's not them. In any case, I know this is a stupid and unimportant example, but something about the phrasing in that piece just set me off.
Point being, there's only one Klosterman. And only one Gammons, only one Simmons, etc. Or is it actually etc.? Who else do we even bother to care about in this regard? Oh I'm sure there's a few other guys who can sometimes accomplish the same things here and there, but you see where I'm going. I think with enough effort you could certainly be the 12th or 20th or so most interesting sportswriter around. Maybe better, maybe worse, but I wouldn't let one perfect column about steroids get you down.
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Jesse, at 7:59 PM
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