Video Games Are Not Violent Enough

Apologies for the lack of blogtastic(tm) blogs, but I've been moving to a new apartment over the last few weeks. My new apartment's amenities include (1) a wall o' mirrors in the bedroom (2) a bottle opener built into the kitchen wall (3) track lighting in the kitchen and (4) a remote controlled light / fan in the living room with a mood lighting setting. Apparently I now live in the apartment of a swinger circa 1975. The shag carpeting and heart shaped tub and the bear rug that goes on top of the shag carpeting are all coming next week.

Also, this blog has nothing to do with video games. I was going to write something about the history of violence in video games (motivated by that recent Supreme Court decision), but I got a bit side tracked and then I didn't feel like thinking up a new title. So next up (maybe): Video games.

But for now, here are a few belated thoughts on Grantland.com. I'm mainly writing this because 90% of my traffic now comes from people searching for information about Grantland.com. The other 10% comes from people searching for information about Megan Fox's freak appendages and "arab toes" and "big p e n i s." Sadly I'm not making any of that up. That's what people are searching for when they end up on my site.

I had wondered about what form Grantland.com would take and what Bill Simmons' role would be. Bill's writing is featured prominently, which I expected, and he's also writing regularly again, which makes sense since he's going to be the site's biggest draw for a while. What I didn't expect was that Dave Eggers' hipster hands with their Flash Gordon secret decoder rings from a 1974 cereal box (that's the type of ring a middle aged hipster would wear, right?) would cradle the Grantland.com globe so closely to his Black Sabbath tshirt (definitely a hipster t-shirt).

Here, let's play a little game I like to call "Title of a McSweeney Article or a Grantland.com Article?" -

Regarding the Crazy Thing That Happened on Last Night's Game of Throne

Like It Or Not, You’re No Bob Costas

Bruins as Bears: The Sportstorialist on Sexual Coding and Playoff Beards

Understanding the Seattle SuperSonics by Comparing Them to Girls You May Have Dated in College

On 'Mama's Boyfriend'

Notes From the Caddieshack

The Empty, Empty Rogers Centre

The Philadelphia Flyers Have a Time Machine

Back into the Belly of The Beast

Dispatches from the NBA Entertainment League: Dispatch 1: The League and Game One: The Shame

Among the Hugs: A Visit to Wembley

Norse History for Bostonians: Lesson 9: A Short History of the Norse Invasion for Bostonians

Regulation Wormholes: The Absurdity of the NBA's Half-court Rule

In Defense of the Chimpy Corollary

On Whiskey and Grease: Pappy Van Winkle

McSweeney’s Recommends

Okay, not so much that last one, but not that easy, right? Here's how to check your answers: The first one is from Grantland and then they alternate all the way down. What can I say? I'm lazy.

Do you know what titles don't sound anything like any of those? These ones -

The Movie Star
Welcome to Draft Diary XV
Painting The NBA Trade Picture
A Black And Gold Day for Boston. Finally.
NBA Finals Game 6 Retro Diary
Dizzying Highs and Terrifying Lows
Proud to be an NHL front-runner
It's time for LeBrondown, Part II
Cashing In on the New Moneyball

Those are Bill's Grantland.com columns. As I speculated in the last blog, Bill does appear glaringly out of place among the more "literary" offerings populating Grantland.com at the moment. This isn't to take anything away from The Sports Guy. My Grantland.com routine has thus far been clicking on a non-Simmons Grantland.com column, getting bored after a few hundred words, and then switching to another tab to read Bill ramble about how 90210 characters are like Boston Red Sox players. Maybe Bill doesn't have all those big words and those complicated sentences with their dependent clauses and subordinators like his Grantland.com brethren, and, sure, Bill couldn't write his way out a wet paper bag if you armed him with a thesaurus and a condensed OED. But he's nothing if not entertaining.

Unfortunately, as of late is he's been only mildly entertaining. Though a mildly entertaining Sports Guy is better than most of what I've read / skimmed / skipped on Grantland thus far, I'm still a bit perplexed as to the drop-off in entertainment value. It's not that any of his columns for Grantland.com have been bad, but they've been rather middling. Take his recent column, The Movie Star, where he (1) apparently forgets to make up a title and (2) spends a few thousand words arguing that Ryan Reynolds isn't a huge movie star.

I guess because so many millions of people have been raving about what a huge movie star he is. Oh, wait, no, not at all. I'm pretty sure he's regarded as either Mr. Scarlett Johansson or that guy from Van Wilder or that guy who was People's Sexiest Man Alive but everyone knew that it was sort of joke because he wasn't nearly famous enough to be that and the honor was only bestowed on him because he was married to Scarlett Johansson.

Bill seems to believe that appearing as the lead in a middle-of-the-pack Summer blockbuster confers some sort of universal recognition as a Legend of the Silver Screen, Mr. Johansson having ascended in the eyes of the movie going public to a position alongside the Cary Grants and Paul Newmans and Elizabeth Taylors of the world. Ummm, dude, Tobey Fucking Maguire and whoever the hell is Harry Potter have been starring in Summer blockbusters for ages and I don't think anyone has accused either of them of threatening to procure the title of "World's Biggest Movie Star."

The Straw Man has always been one of Bill's best friend and it is not like he's ever been a master arguer. We are talking about a guy who wrote an approximately 4,000 page book with the central theme that successful sports teams are successful because they know "The Secret," a nebulous notion which basically boils down to "good team chemistry." Yep. But there seems to be more behind the lackluster columns than just unpersuasive arguments. A few ideas -

(1) Bill's rusty. Remember, his column writing has dwindled the last few years as he was preoccupied with his podcasts and writing the The Book of Basketball. Perhaps it will take time for him to work himself back into mid-season column-writing form.

(2) Bill needs an editor. I believe that he always worked with one while writing for espn.com. Is he working without one now since he's the Editor in Chief of Grantland.com? I don't know exactly how that works, but it would seem odd to have an editor to edit the Editor in Chief. Is the new found freedom too much for him?

(3) Or maybe Bill's just out of ideas, his initial turning away from column writing necessitated by a lack of anything new to say and not because he wanted to explore the wild, wacky world of Podcasts. Or, as I call them, Non-Streamed Syndicated Internet Radio Shows (NSSIRS). Trust me, I know all about a writer who's written so much that he's the shadow of the shell of the shadow (the shadow's shell's shadow, if you're keeping track at home) of his former self. Oh, boy, do I. Sigh . . . But anyway . . . wait . . . sigh . . . anyway -

Sigh.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm slowly moving my three-hundred or so myspace blogs over to a blogger site since myspace might disappear any day now. More details to come.