3 posts tagged “billsimmons”
from espn.com's bill simmons:
One more thing ...
I found it fascinating that, in the same month that "Gridiron Gang" became the No. 1 movie, HBO ignored perpetually crummy ratings and renewed "The Wire" for a fifth and final season. After plowing through the first 37 episodes of "The Wire" in three weeks this summer, I agree with others who argue that it's the most important television show of all-time, surpassing even "The Sopranos" because of its ambition and social relevance. The "Sopranos" worked because the acting and writing was so exceptional, we found ourselves identifying with unlikable characters who were basically unredeemable (save for Tony's wife, his children and his therapist). We excused every horrible action because we grew to like these characters personally over the years. In real life, we probably wouldn't like any of them, and we would definitely be afraid of them. It's fantasy disguised as reality: Lose yourself in the show for an hour, digest it when it's over and move on to something else.
Well, there's nowhere to hide in "The Wire." The characters are stuck in Baltimore, a washed-up city ravaged by drugs, poverty and political corruption. Our closest thing to heroes are renegade detective Jimmy McNulty (a likable, hard-drinking iconoclast who disappears for much of Season 2 and becomes completely irrelevant in Season 4) and a gun-wielding nomad named Omar (a scarfaced Robin Hood, only if Robin Hood was gay and stole from drug dealers). We spend three full seasons watching Baltimore police break the city's biggest drug syndicate ... only to watch an angrier, more ruthless group of rival dealers immediately pop up in its place. The current season centers around four poor teenagers (all of them threatening to succumb to the drug lifestyle) and Baltimore's incompetent school system (which can't even begin to hope to save them), with the show elucidating in painstaking detail why these kids can't be salvaged: They have no role models and no chance to escape, and things will never change because the lead politicians and major police heads only care about themselves. There's no overall plan to save the city, no passionate leader on the horizon, nothing. All of it would take too much effort. Like a dead fish, Baltimore rots from the head down.
It's an exceptional show, and I'm not even sure "exceptional" is a strong enough word. Of course, barely anyone watches it. HBO deliberated over its renewal all summer until the gushing feedback for Season 4 left them no choice. Late to the party, I spent the past few weeks devouring the show, then the next week wondering what took everyone else so long to jump on the bandwagon, and more importantly, what took ME so long to jump on the bandwagon. Two weeks ago in this space, I explained how I'm one of those people who doesn't like when other people tell me, "YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS SHOW!" If anything, that makes me not want to watch it. I like to stumble across these things organically.
Now I'm wondering if I avoided "The Wire" because its central themes -- drugs, corruption, urban decay -- were realities that I simply wanted to ignore. Instead of being haunted by a show like this, it was easier and safer to skip it entirely. Most people feel this way, I'm guessing; it's the only conceivable reason why five times as many people would watch "The Sopranos" over a show that's better in every way. See, when most Americans dabble in inner-city TV shows or movies for our "taste" of street life, we're hoping for the Hollywood version. We don't want despair and decay, we want hope and triumph. We don't want the zero sum game of drug dealers killing each other, we want the Rock coaching juvie kids and turning their lives around in two hours. We want them to win the big football game, we want the movie to end, and we don't want to think about these people ever again.
That's the real reason why "Gridiron Gang" became the No. 1 movie last weekend, and that's the real reason why "The Wire" was barely renewed for a fifth season. Upon further review, maybe the problem isn't Hollywood after all.
Q: I have a new category called a "Gooden." Basically someone who
had an amazing 3-4 years and just got worse as time went on except this
person does not know it. I say this because I saw Britney Spears on
"The Today Show." Oh my; was it just a couple of years ago she was the
hottest female in all God's creation? She now looks like a very worn
Go-Go dancer in an afternoon dance who you look at and say "She must
have been hot when she started."
--Mike Dietrich, Old Bridge, N.J.
Q:
You (me, us) are all older, musically savvy types, always could spot a
pretender from the real thing (OK, alternative music snobs), never got
suckered in ... and yet, you still bought into the Counting Crows when
they burst upon the scene, thought that these guys actually were the
real thing and a possibly great group ... and the next thing you're
wondering [is] what the hell happened, and feeling slightly sheepish,
embarrassed that you professed believing in them. But that first album
is still great, and it still makes you wistfully recall those days.
Call it the "Counting Crows Corollary" -- what athletes out there
seemingly came out of nowhere, had an amazing first season or year, had
everyone believing the were the Second Coming real deal, and then just
imploded/revealed themselves to be nothing at all, leaving all to shake
their heads in befuddlement, yet still you can savor that magic season.
--Nick, Washington D.C.
SG: Did you ever think you would see two people separately use Dwight Gooden and the Counting Crows to come to the exact same conclusion? That was kinda cool. I love this job sometimes.
By the way, further down the page:
Hollinger needs to expand his horizons because the whole efficiency rating gimmick could work for just about every aspect of life: Amount of alcohol somebody drank over the course of a night; number of quality hookups; money spent on a woman versus the actual "return" on the investment; percentage of drunken eBay, Amazon and iTunes purchases versus sober ones; quality of sex scenes during a Skinemax movie; ability of someone to continually get friends to buy them drinks over a prolonged period of time by using a variety of excuses like, "I forgot to hit an ATM. Can you cover me?"
Simmons has mentioned this idea of lifestats before; I can honestly say I had it (or at least expressed it to myself) before he did. I wrote a post on teh old worldwideeyed.com site about this, and about how heaven was just a chance to look at your stats, understand where you really need to improve and what you do well, and you get back out there. But he has a national audience, and I don't.
So, the other day, during the quarterfinals, some friends and I were considering the possibility of a Germany-France final, which lead us wondering how funny it would be if the game went along so that Germany was kicking ass the whole time, but with about ten minutes left in the game, the US team showed up to play for France, and was able to overcome Germany before the end of the match.
Other possibly fun war-related games, in case you wanted to make something of this:
- Poland being defeated by Germany without knowing a match was to take place
- Ethiopia versus the Italians
- Japan starting its own tournament with its own rules, Asia losing to them.
"If you're a Nazi war criminal who escaped the Allied forces after WWII, who do you root for tomorrow: Germany, who propelled you to the top of their system, or Argentina, who took you in and helped hide your crimes against humanity?"
How else could you articulte war history through soccer?
