I was invited to Will Leitch's book release party yesterday. As a sidenote, his book, God Save The Fan, has the follow "tags" in Amazon: "emo bang", "barbaro", "nightmare fuel", "black t-shirt", "affirmed" and my two favorites: "subtitles are consuming books" and "ghost written by sussman".
It was strange to see an invite from Leitch's personal account for this little private party. After all, doesn't every one suspect I hate Leitch or something? Well, truth is I actually am fond of Will - he's a nice guy, easy to talk to, friendly, and easily accessible (when he wants to be). I may not be a huge fan of Deadspin, or to be more specific, some of the things the site (and Gawker Media in general) does, and does not, do. But I can certainly distinguish between the site and the man behind the site. And the man is a good guy.
I'm not sure why I got an invite, but I'm guessing it was either because
a) Will meant to e-mail his friend Stephanie, but after typing the S-T, but he then accidentally typed "O", and "stopmikelupica" popped up.
b) He wanted me to buy him a drink.
c) He really likes those Olympic Previews.
Well, since I had a late game in the neighborhood anyway, I figured I would head down to the old hood, say hi to Mom, and drop in for a quick drink. Congratulate the man on an impressive accomplishment - writing and getting a book published (not his first one, but his most ambitious one to date). I've been around enough people in the publishing business, and know a few authors who have had books published... it ain't easy, and it takes a large amount of commitment.
I decided to pick up a copy before the little party. I stopped by the local Borders. If you are wondering why: The GF has like 50% off coupons for Borders, and I had a gift card. Ergo, Borders.
I asked the information dude for the book; he looks it up, says I can find it in the "sports reference" section. It's sorted alphabetically by authors' last name. I'll give you one guess who wrote the book to the right of "Leitch".
Reaffirming my belief in society's goodness: The two most prominently displayed books in this section, full of ESPN garbage and the ilk - one, "Forty Million Dollar Slaves" (by William Rhoden), and two, David Zirin's book "Welcome to the Terrordome". Both are good reads, by great authors. I was glad to see them displayed well, getting love, though only in a uber-liberal place like New York City would that even be possible.
I picked up the book, took it downtown, got it signed by Leitch. His shindig was even more exclusive than I thought, pretty much confirming that my invite was purely accident. Seriously, it was family, friends, close business contacts, and... SML?!? I had to leave quickly, so I didn't get a chance to buy him a drink (expect no links to SML from Deadspin!), but again, props to him.
And now I'm looking forward to that day when I get an invite a party from the boys over at The Big Lead. Those guys would be fun to chill with... I have a feeling one of them has to be a minority.
As for the book itself, I've read a bit of it. I'm not going to do a review, or anything of the sort. My take on it, and whether you should buy it, is similar to what I once told a girl, many years ago, that I wanted to go out with: "You've known me for a while now. You know what I'm about by now." Meaning - look, you know enough about me by now to know whether or not you want to date me. Period.
And you know enough about Deadspin, and Leitch, to know whether you want the book or not. My words ain't gonna make a difference.
Bonus fact: The GF was checking out the book last night. She poked fun of the back cover reviews ("I love how they italize New York Times best-selling author John Doe in all the reviews, so that when you look at it quickly you might think that these reviews are from the NY Times, and not from random guys."), then read the first page. Her comment to me, 30 seconds in?
"Wow, they misspelled a word already in the first paragraph!"
You all don't know this, but... every time I post something, I get an e-mail from the GF... "Damn, you misspelled this word, that word, this sentence is wrong, etc...". The irony is that my longtime ex-GF was an editor in the publishing biz, and even she wasn't as tough on me as the current GF!
But I'm glad at least she's consistent.
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Links!
Via our boy Signal 2 Noise we get some OJ Mayo and Kevin Love updates. First the OJ Mayo update - he's apparently in trouble for accepting some free tickets to a Lakers game from Carmelo Anthony. It's a controversial rule; in fact, it's yet another silly rule that serves to undermine it's intent, which is supposedly to keep amateur athletes from being "brought".
I like that Mayo's coach, Tim Floyd, went to bat for him on this one. It also seems Floyd won't punish Mayo, even if the NCAA might. Floyd and Mayo seem to have a good relationship; Floyd has gone to bat for Mayo before in other "controversies" (like when the story behind Mayo's "recruitment" by USC broke out, which is mainly that Mayo went directly to Floyd and said he wanted to go there).
It's hard not to see that the bullseye that has been placed on Mayo.
Then the Kevin Love update, which always serves as a bit of a contrast. Here is Signal 2 Noise's entry on Love and his controversial father, both of whom rarely receive the negative coverage that Mayo gets. I'm not saying they should, but am pointing out that if the media wanted to treat Love like they treat Mayo, well, they certainly could!
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Speaking of Kevin Love... via CuseAdelphia's fun post on backboard-breaking dunks, here is a clip of Love breaking a backboard in high school last year, featuring some commentary by Kevin Love himself:
Hat tip to The Big Lead.
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Via True Hoops we found this great footage of an amazing pass by our boy Pepe Sanchez:
Mock me if you want, but Pepe is my people. Two national jerseys in my closet - one is Ginobili. The other? Pepe Sanchez.
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Remember when I wrote about the Knicks-Pistons game I went to, and talked about the crazy dance that the Pistons do during the pregame introductions? I believe the Greek Prof and I described it as such:
"After being introduced, the Pistons players all put their arms around each other and dance in circle, like their about to do the Hava Nagili or something. Except for Rasheed Wallace, who trots around like he's riding an imaginary horse. He then jumps into the middle of the circle, and all the Pistons chant while he gets his groove on. This is all going on while the Knicks are getting introduced. It's like an Eastern European wedding mixed with Soul Train and The Haka."
Well, Natalie at Need4Sheed has some video of it up. Sorry Bill Simmons, but the Pistons do this all the time, not just before the Celtics. World don't revolve around Boston just because you guys think it does! Unless the Pistons do it for the Celtics and... the Knicks, on their fourth game in five days.
Oh, please do check out the video. And watch Primo Brezec, who is apparently having a great time. Of all the players, he has the biggest smile going on while this is happening. My boy Walter Herrmann? He's really trying, huh? He's focused, he's hustling....
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I read the story this morning about the British tourist family who had "an ordeal" during their trip here to New York City. I'm in agreement with most of these Gawker commenters who are a bit unsympathetic.
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Finally, Scott Van Pelt Style has a post up about the new stadium that's being built for the Nationals down in DC, and some racial incidents that have taken place.
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Tom: My GF will most certainly point that out to me, because she's pointed that out to me about a half-dozen times! Seriously, I've made that same mistake ("brought" vs. "bought") in many posts, and everytime she'll e-mail me: "I've told you before: brought for..., bought for..."
Don't believe me? Guess what popped up in my inbox ten minutes ago:
"Someone called you on “brought” vs. “bought,” ha! How many times have we gone through this one, SML? Maybe a sit-down lecture with diagrams and worksheets and role play is in order. Seriously, you need to learn the difference between the two words and the proper usage of them."
Jeez.
But, to her credit, she also retracted her complaint about the "error" in the first paragraph of Leitch's book. She had a beef with the spelling of "something something Web site". Turns out that the NY Times (which Will has written for) standard is to write it as "Web site" and not "website"....
SML,I really do get your girlfriend point, but you got me revved for the Big Book Review and I felt just a little bit deflated!
Has your girlfriend pointed out that you use "effect" when you should be using "affect"?
LR: Yes! That would be number two on her pet peeve list.
Modi: Hmm. Maybe. I will say this for it so far: It's not Deadspin. He's a lot more willing to express his opinions on sports in this book, through a series of essays. I like the one on steroids (it's essentially the first "real" chapter, after the intro), in that he deals with the reality of the matter. He writes about how while the media is busy turning guys like Bonds, McGwire and Sosa into "pariahs", the same fans and media cheer when Scott Rolen takes a cortisone shot before a World Series game. He also talks about the potential that in the future someone will invent a PED that has no side effects, and thus every person is going to use it. Even players.
I'm all for exposing hyprocrisy.
But I honestly haven't read very much of it yet, because I passed it to my GF to read... I liked the "readability" of it, meaning I felt that it was easy for a non-sports fan like her to read, since it doesn't go too much into sports jargon. I felt like it made a good "sports blog issues for dummies" guide in that way. I passed the book to her, in the hopes that she'll hopefully be more versed in the stuff that we discuss here on a regular basis. As soon as I get it back I'll finish reading it.
I'm sure your gf will point this out to you, but when you say:
It's a controversial rule; in fact, it's yet another silly rule that serves to undermine it's intent, which is supposedly to keep amateur athletes from being "brought".
I believe you mean it's to keep amateur athletes from being "bought"