Tag Archives: Bill Simmons

Bill, you act and talk a lot different in my head

Dear Bill Simmons:

I’m most familiar with you in print. That’s not to say I’ve never seen you on TV, but whenever I’m watching ESPN and you happen to be one of the commentators, I’m always like, that’s Bill? Because I’m just so used to seeing that photo of you after your columns on Grantland, you know, the one where you’re staring straight ahead at the camera, smiling as if you’re almost finished genuinely laughing at a really funny joke.

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Every once in a while I’ll do an image search for your face and I’ll get a few that pop up where you have a goatee. Do you have a goatee right now? I don’t even know. When I was seventeen I grew my first goatee. I was trying so desperately to be an adult, so I stopped shaving my chin and I let this growth just barely thicker than peach fuzz accumulate into something resembling a really cheap brown Brillo pad.

Every once in a while I’ll come across one of those photos from high school. It’s like as soon as I got my driver’s license, I used my newfound freedom to buy a hair-bleaching kit, I gelled my do into hair, yellow spikes, and when combined with the almost-facial hair I was talking about before, I kind of looked like a wimpier, dorkier clone of the lead singer from that nineties band Sugar Ray.

I’m so glad that cell phone cameras and Facebook weren’t around back then, because I’ll look at some of those images of what I was trying to be, the look I really struggled to embody, and I totally cringe. I mean, I’m really, truly lucky to not have an endless stream of digital photos and selfies floating around from my teenage years haunting my present. I remember looking in the mirror and being like, yes, this is awesome. But everyone else must have been like, wow, that kid really, really wants to be cool.

Then again, I’m probably putting way too much weight into imagining people spending any time at all considering my appearance. I’m barely considering anybody’s appearance but my own. Like you Bill, like I was talking about earlier, I don’t even really know what you look like. Yes, I have that stock photo of you practically committed to memory, but if I were out on the street and I saw you coming at me from a forty-five degree angle, would I make the connection? Would I be like, wow, there’s the Sports Guy?

I don’t think so. Again, I have no idea how clean shaven you might be at the moment. Also, every once in a while I’ll come across a picture of you and your hair might be a little grayer than it appears on the Grantland web site. Because when was the last time you sat for a portrait? Five years ago? I’m guessing five years ago, just based purely on the very few times I’ve seen you on TV. It’s not that I’m not a fan of your ESPN stuff, it’s just that, I don’t have cable, and so yeah, you’re mostly just this vague Internet presence in my life.

You’re kind of like God to me. Not like you’re a deity or anything. I’m not trying to come across as creepy. Unless you want me to worship you like a deity, in which case, I’ll do whatever you want. Did I mention that I’m trying to get you to hire me as a full-time writer? But about the God thing, what I mean is, I have your writings, right, and I have a vague idea of your appearance, or an idealized version of what you look like.

And everything else is just kind of me making stuff up about you. Like your voice. I know you have a real voice, because every once in a while I’ll listen to one of your podcasts. But it just doesn’t match up to the voice you have when I’m having a mock-interview with you at the Grantland office in my head. It’s not better or worse, it’s just, you know like when you read a book? Like a really old book? And you have to assign voices to certain characters? I mean, you don’t have to, but it just happens automatically. And so when I first started reading your stuff, my brain just gave you this voice, and it’s stuck. So on those rare occasions when I’m watching ESPN and some guy with a goatee that I don’t recognize starts talking in a voice that’s not familiar, I get confused, I’m like, what, does ESPN have two guys named Bill Simmons providing on-air commentary? And then I get it, it’s you, but it’s always after that uncomfortable thirty seconds or so of disassociation.

I’m not trying to say that the real you doesn’t live up to the you that I’ve constructed in my head, I’m just saying, hire me as a full-time writer, call me in to the office to spitball ideas. I’m sure that after like a week or two of working under your tutelage, I’ll let go completely of the false God I’m currently kneeling before in my imagination. And then I’ll come into your office one day and I’ll be like, Bill, who’s this clown they’ve got posted underneath your columns on Grantland? And you’ll be like, that’s me Rob, that’s my stock photo.

Because yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know if I can hold onto both the real you and this fake you. But I definitely want it to be the real you as the only Bill Simmons living in my head. Is this coming off as a little creepy? Because it’s not. I promise. Let me get to know the real you, Bill. Hire me as full-time writer at Grantland. I’ll grow a goatee.

Your biggest fan on the Internet,

Rob G.

Bill, I didn’t really enjoy the Super Bowl this year

Dear Bill Simmons:

Did you watch the Super Bowl? Of course you watched the Super Bowl, you’re the Sports Guy, you kind of have to watch the Super Bowl. But did you like it? I didn’t really like it. I think it’s generally acknowledged that the game was boring, an uneven slugfest. Peyton didn’t have any time. The Seahawks defense was too good. Blah, blah, blah, these are all just generic Super Bowl bites that I’m rehashing almost directly from Grantland anyway.

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I stole this image from Grantland too. Sorry Bill. I’ll make it up to you once I’m one of your full-time employees.

But aside from the game, did you like the Super Bowl? Like, you’ve made a career out of following sports, writing about sports, so in many ways, this event is like the peak of everything that professional sports strives to be. Or, American professional sports anyway. Because the NFL is pure America, or it strives to be anyway. It more or less exists within the confines of the United States, and judging from the spectacle that was Sunday’s Super Bowl, it’s not a comfortable fit either.

Look at the NFL, and look at NASCAR, its racecar cousin. They’re both basically the same thing. They’re these giant sports that, for the most part, are totally inaccessible to the average American. Anybody can grab a basketball and head to the park for a little pickup, and it’s the same for baseball and soccer. But tackle football? The Daytona 500? You can’t go out and join a pit crew.

I guess you could join a pit crew. But you’d have to make it your job, like that would have to be your whole life. And so, unless you’re committed to climbing that ladder, unless you somehow find a way to coach or play football at some sort of a professional level, you’re really left with whatever the NFL or NASCAR decides to give you.

And, just like most of the writers at Grantland have been pointing out all season, they’re giving us these shows. The NFL has perfected football as an event, as sports entertainment. It’s big, it’s loud, and it’s got something for everyone.

Maybe it would have been OK if there were an actual football game to watch. But the one-sided assault that was Sunday night’s game brought into stark relief what a bunch of nonsense the Super Bowl is as a national event.

Commercials? Like, you have these increasingly rare moments when a large portion of the country turns its attention to the same thing at the same time, and the best we can do is a bunch of advertisements? I don’t care how entertaining you think you’re being trying to sell me Coca-Cola of Bud Light, it’s still a billboard, something that, if I were watching a regular TV show, something that I recorded on my DVR, I’d gladly skip over, one hundred percent of the time.

And I think about other sports, the finals in hockey, baseball, basketball, regardless of how we watch them on TV or follow them on the Internet, it’s all mostly centered around actual sports, fighting for the championship in front of actual fans. Maybe it’s just a natural consequence of the stop-and-go nature of professional football, and yeah, there were plenty of fans visiting New York from Seattle and Denver, but the whole event just felt fake, totally inauthentic. I was more interested in reading about the throngs of out-of-towners getting stuck for hours at some train station in Secaucus than I was in the actual game.

I don’t want to be a downer. But it was just really lame. The commercials were really lame. Yeah it was cool seeing Seinfeld and George act like Seinfeld and George, but was it really that funny? Was that cute puppy and horse Budweiser ad worth me tuning into Channel 5 rather than just clicking play on my computer?

I don’t know. Maybe if the Giants were playing I would have been a little more pumped.

Hey Bill, can I still have a job at Grantland? Please?

Love,

Rob

Bill, I had a space dream, and you were in it

Dear Bill Simmons:

I had this dream last week where NASA offered you the chance to hop on a rocket ship and captain a deep space mission. “Bill,” they said, “We want you to spread sports across the cosmos. Get out there, find some alien life, and teach them all about basketball and football and hockey. Show them about sportsmanship and being a team player and the importance of picking a good mascot to represent their species. If there’s anybody that can not only show the aliens what Earth sports are all about, but can also get them actually interested, it’s you.”

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And you were like, “I’ll do it.” And everyone smiled, but you continued, “On one condition. I pick the crew.” And they were a little skeptical, I mean, what do you really know about staffing a spaceship? But eventually they realized that it was the only way they’d get you on board, and so they agreed, “All right Bill, we hope you know what you’re doing.”

You did know what you were doing. You picked me to join you as your first officer. I was sitting here on my computer, dicking around, killing some time before I had to go to work, when I got this call on my cell phone from an unknown number. It was you.

“Hey Rob, Bill Simmons here. I’ve been reading your letters to me every week on your web site asking me for a job. Well, here it is, your lucky day!” And at first I was really excited, like, yes, finally, I’m going to get to work at Grantland, me, a full-time writer at one of the best sports and pop culture web sites on the Internet. My imagination went crazy, I started picturing what kind of posters I’d use to decorate my office, or how I’d casually drop by your office around three-thirty to ask if you wanted anything while I went out to Starbucks.

It was a shock when you told me it wasn’t exactly the offer that I’d been dreaming about, but of course I still accepted without hesitation. Because seriously Bill, I’d do anything to work with you. I’d leave all of my family and friends here on Earth as we set out on a one-way trip to explore the galaxy. That’s the kind of dedication I’d bring to your team, in both my fantasy dream world and in real life.

Yeah, the dream kind of went in a weird direction after I said yes to the mission. Like most dreams go, there were huge gaps in the narrative, weird tangential events that didn’t really make much sense in terms of context or continuity. For example, all of the sudden we were both deep in space, and you told me that the months of isolation were starting to get to you, that routine spaceship maintenance work wasn’t as satisfying as you thought it might be.

But I was like, “Bill, why didn’t you say something earlier? I brought a chess set. We could learn to play, together.” And yeah, you lit up at the idea of a new hobby, something to really challenge your atrophying mental faculties. But we discovered pretty quickly that playing chess in zero-g isn’t really possible pastime. Maybe if I had thought it out a little better, like if I brought some Velcro, something to keep the pieces from flying off the board. But no, I didn’t have anything, and so we both gave up after a few minutes of futilely trying just to keep everything still on the constantly floating surface.

And then pretty soon after that, we weren’t in space anymore, we were at a McDonald’s. It didn’t make sense at all, but neither of us questioned our new surroundings. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, you didn’t even remember being in space at all. And when I was like, “Bill, don’t you remember? The spaceship? The chess set?” you were like, “My name’s not Bill, it’s Fred. And can you hurry up a little with my order?”

It was then that I looked down, and I was actually behind the counter, I was wearing a McDonald’s uniform, and my name tag didn’t say “Rob,” it said, “Jean.” Which, yeah, that doesn’t really make much sense. The rest of the dream went on for like another minute or so, in dream minutes anyway, who knows how long it was in real life. Everything got fuzzier and fuzzier until I woke up, it was ten-thirty, I was late for work. But I still thought, I’ve got to write this down. I’ve got to tell Bill.

And now that I’ve written it all out, I’m actually kind of sorry, because for real, I know how boring dream stories are. Whenever anybody starts telling me, “Rob, listen to this dream I had …” I automatically shut down, because regardless of how interesting the dream may have been in the dream, it’s never even remotely worth retelling once you wake up. And so I don’t know why I thought this one was going to be different, because it wasn’t, and again, I apologize.

All I can say is, when you hire me to work at Grantland, I’ll never talk about my dreams. Unless you order me to. Then I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you say. That’s the kind of employee I am. Unless you order me to stop following your orders, because I’m not that clever, I won’t really know how to respond to one of those logical paradoxes.

Anyway, I hope you have a great weekend. And I hope that whichever team you predicted to win the Super Bowl wins. And I’ll tell everybody, “See? It’s just like Bill Simmons said would happen. That guy is the best.” Me? I predicted the Giants would win, way back when they were 0 – 6. Things were looking pretty good for a while, until Dallas scored that field goal. I hate the Cowboys.

Your friend,

Rob G.

Hey Bill, I can shovel your sidewalk if you want

Dear Bill Simmons:

We just had a pretty big snowstorm here in New York. The night before it started coming down, the news was telling us to expect at least ten inches. And no, I didn’t get out and measure it or anything like that, but it looks like ten inches, I think. It’s a lot of snow, is what I’m getting at here. It’s a powdery type of snow though, not too dense, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to clean up.

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Still, snow is snow, and I had to shovel. I actually got a ticket for not shoveling in front of my house the last time it snowed. Yeah, yeah, I know, I have like a million excuses, like I was working both the night of the last snowstorm and the night after. So it was like, I came home from work, I should have just shoveled right away, but I put it off for the next day. And of course I overslept, I was rushing to get ready for the following night at the restaurant. I told myself, tomorrow, definitely tomorrow. But the Department of Sanitation must have been thinking the same thing, tomorrow, we’re definitely giving that guy a ticket tomorrow.

This time around, I made sure, as soon as that last snowflake fell, I was outside with my shovel. As I was shoveling I thought, Bill, wouldn’t it be cool if we were next-door neighbors? I know you’re a busy guy, and so I’d totally get your walk if you were at work or something. I don’t know exactly where your job takes you these days, I mean, I don’t really know where you do your filming for ESPN. You write a lot about how you’re from Boston, but you don’t live there anymore do you?

Maybe if you moved to Queens, right next-door to me, it would be like a rude awakening, it would snow, you’d have to shovel. How long has it been since you’ve had to shovel a walk? Don’t worry about it too much though, I told you, I’d help out. And maybe you’d be walking home just as I was finishing up the path right to your front door. Would we have met yet? Like, maybe you’d have waved to me every now and then on your way out the door. But a conversation?

“Hey man, thanks a lot, I really appreciate the help. I’m Bill, by the way, I know we haven’t gotten a chance for any official introductions, but yeah, thanks again for the shoveling.”

I’d say, “Hey, Bill, no problem, any time man.” And then it would get tricky, because obviously I’d recognize you, you’re a pretty famous guy. But do I want to come across as too eager? Like, “Yeah, I know you, you’re Bill Simmons, you’re the Sports Guy, I read all of your stuff on Grantland, I actually have a blog where I write you a letter every week begging for a job as a full-time writer. Have you seen it? Have you read any of my letters? What do you think Bill, can I have a job?”

It might come off as a little too strong. Still, anything else, like if I pretended not to know who you are, “My name’s Rob. Nice to meet you … Bill? Did you say it was Bill? Or Phil?” and you’d have to reintroduce yourself, “Bill. Bill Simmons.” That’s cool, I mean, it would have the benefit of you thinking that you could let your guard down around me, you’d go to work in the morning, you’d be the Sports Guy, but you’d come home at night and you’d just be regular next-door neighbor Bill, hanging out with his new friend Rob, a nice guy who shoveled his sidewalk, plus the path leading to his door, all out of the goodness of his own heart, not looking for anything in return.

Which of course isn’t really true, which is why I’d hesitate to go down that route. What if we hit it off? What if we became good friends? You’d obviously start to ask me questions like, what do you do for a living Rob? And I’d have to be like, well Bill, since you asked, I’m an aspiring writer. What about you?

And you’d go into your whole, “Really? I’m a writer too. I’d love to look at your stuff.” Which, yeah, that would be great. Please, read my stuff Bill. But then you’d come across these letters, the whole Dear Bill Simmons column, and you’d see that not only did I know who you were all along, but maybe my generous acts of snow shoveling weren’t as selfless as they appeared.

You’d think, is anything that Rob’s said about himself true? I’d try to explain, that yes, I really am a nice guy, and also yes, I desperately want to write for Grantland. “You moving next-door to me, I couldn’t believe the luck, but I didn’t know how to handle the situation. So, I’m sorry Bill, I’m sorry for coming across as disingenuous, but I just really, really want to work for you. And I also really want to be great neighbors. And maybe friends. But we’ll take it slow. What do you say?”

I’m pretty confident that you’d see through to the real me. I’m a nice guy Bill. And although we’ll probably never be next-door neighbors, we could still be coworkers. You could totally be my boss. And while I won’t push the friendship thing, I won’t close the door on it completely. So maybe like after years of working for you, building up a professional relationship, one based on hard work and writing whatever you tell me to write, maybe we can think about being friends. But first things first. Offer me a job Bill. I’ll say yes. Ask me to shovel your walk. I’ll say no. You’ll say, “But I thought you’d do whatever I told you to do.” And I’ll say, “I can’t shovel your walk. Because I already did it.”

I’m for real Bill. Give me a shout. Give me a job. Please.

Love,

Rob G.

Billy, sweet Billy boy

Dear Bill Simmons:

Panel & Screening Of "Beyond Playing The Field" 2010 Tribeca Film Festival

Bill, what’s up man? Am I getting through to you? Do I have a job at Grantland yet? Maybe this is all part of the process, like, week one, you saw my first letter, you were like, big deal, I get crazy letters from people all the time. And then week two, you saw that second letter and the beginnings of a smile started to form at the corners of your mouth, you thought, OK, maybe this guy’s serious. Probably not, but maybe. And here we are, week three, I’m imagining you reading this paragraph, this very sentence, and maybe you’re not directly thinking about personally giving me a call to say, “Welcome aboard, kid,” but there’s a part of your brain that can’t help but think about that spot over in the corner, you’re saying to yourself, “Well, maybe I could fit an extra desk there. And yeah, I guess we might be able to scrounge up the money to pay another full-time writer.”

I get it Bill, I know that this is a process. We’re still getting to know one another. Well, that’s not true exactly, because I’ve been reading your stuff online for a while now, I’m sure I know you about as well as you want all of your readers to know you. But you’re just getting to know me, through these letters. Assuming you are reading these. And yeah, I’m not blind to the fact that you might not be seeing them in real time. It’s hard to attract the attention of famous people on the Internet. It’s even harder when the sole purpose of attracting that attention is purely trying to get something out of that famous person.

Am I making that clear enough Bill? I just want you to give me a job. I don’t want to go through the whole traditional trying-to-break-into-the-industry route. I just want it to happen. I just want to magically say the name Bill Simmons three times in a row, and then you’ll appear in my inbox. It’ll be a letter that says something like:

“Hey Rob! I just came across all of your open letters to me on your blog. I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed with your style. Although it doesn’t take a lot of guts to just put stuff online, I’m more interested in the fact that you just kept writing to me, every week, posting links to your blog posts on Twitter, linking them to my Twitter, hoping that eventually I’d see something and offer you a job. Well, here it is Rob, the offer you’ve been waiting for. When can you start?”

You can use that letter if you want, I know you’re super busy, writing your own stuff. You probably don’t have a ton of time to respond individually to every aspiring writer seeking employment through your web site. I can start on Monday by the way. Any Monday. You call me or email me on any day of the week, and I’ll be there that Monday. Unless you get in contact with me on a Monday, in which case I’ll be there the following Monday. You understand, right? Same-day notice is a little tough.

But yeah, I do understand, there’s a lot of noise out there, everybody wants a cool writing job, it’s statistically improbable that I’m going to get your attention just by writing these letters. It’s tough out there, getting a job that doesn’t involve waiting tables. And writing? Forget about it. If I had any success nailing a writing gig, well, I wouldn’t be begging you from the Internet for a long-shot chance at a job.

Most of the stuff I send out gets no reply, which is almost worse than a flat-out rejection, because even if I did get rejected, at least I’d know that my stuff was getting through. With the no response, I can’t even imagine that my email or my resume is ever opened in the first place.

Except for this one time, I applied for an editorial position on some video game and comic book web site. I really wanted it, so badly, so I had an Edible Arrangement sent their office with a note that said, “Please, please, please, please, please hire me.”

And yeah, they called me in for an interview. It was crazy. Seriously, I started worrying that it was actually crazy, that I had put myself out there in a way that was abnormal. I pictured these people reading my note and thinking, did this guy actually send us a bouquet of fruit? I guess we should have him in here, just because, you know, he sent us the fruit.

I didn’t get the job, not even a callback. The whole interview was so awkward. When I got face-to-face with the editor in charge of hiring, I totally froze. I was sweating through my button-down. My answers didn’t make any sense, and I forgot to bring up the Edible Arrangement entirely. I mean, he didn’t bring it up, and I didn’t bring it up, and the next thing I knew, I was outside on the corner, little speckles of foam accumulating at the corners of my lips because I was so nervous and my mouth got really dry. And even though for a second I felt like I’d cracked some sort of code, like a “how-to-get-a-guaranteed-interview” life hack, man, those Edible Arrangements aren’t cheap. If only I had a ton of money, I could send you an Edible Arrangement. You and everyone else I’d like to work for.

Hey Bill, can I borrow fifty bucks? What do you like better, pineapples or strawberries? Can I please have a job?

Love,

Rob G.