Huked on fonics

I'm currently reading "Now I Can Die In Peace" by Bill Simmons, a.k.a. "The Sports Guy" or "The Boston Sports Guy". I always loved his columns for ESPN.com before the Red Sox won the World Series. His humor and pop culture references always made me laugh. It was great to have the voice of New England sports be heard by a national audience; someone at ESPN could actually empathize with fans of the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins.

I have to admit that I'm not as a big a fan of Bill Simmons as I used to be. Once the Sox won it all he started to give in to the pressure to be a more national writer. Maybe he was also influenced by his move to California. Whatever the reason his columns didn't connect with me anymore and definitely weren't as humorous.

I bought his book just after the holidays in late December. I originally thought that he had penned a book from scratch, especially since it took a year or so after the Sox won to be published. It turns out he collected his Sox articles from his old "BostonSportsGuy" website and ESPN.com and added a bunch of sidebars to them. He edited the columns for basic streamlining, but not for tone and intent. The many side notes he added flesh out a lot of insights to his writing, what he was thinking at the time, background on a reference to a pop culture event or a friend, etc.

I have to say that the book is wonderful. It captures all that I used to love about Bill Simmon's columns. First and foremost it's about the Sox and the ups-and-downs of being a Red Sox fan. It also lends more insight to the pysche of the Sports Guy. I'm about halfway through the book and I highly recommend it to any Sox fan or fan of Bill Simmons writing. It's money well spent.

One final unrelated note tonight: I uploaded a pic for yesterday's post that I couldn't upload last night. Blogger was doing maintenance. Give the column a quick glance and you can't miss it. It's perfect for the context.

Hopefully I can start publishing this thing earlier in the day. Otherwise I hope people visit first thing in the morning. I guess that makes two unrelated notes, not one. Oh, well.