I started reading reading Bill Simmons' writing about three years or so ago. He quickly became my favorite sports writer. He mixed in references to pop culture seamlessly, and many times comically clumsily, into his columns. He looked at sports, movies, tv and life in general like me and my buddies did — quoting movies left and right.
He's a writer for ESPN, started out in Bahston. He's a dieheard sports fan, specifically living and dying for the Beantown franchises. I stopped reading his colums after the BoSox won the series. Not because I was some kind of huge Yanks fan or anything, but because he got kinda annoying. Every single column was BoSox/Pats related. I just didn't care.
I went back here and there to check back in and I'd read an article or two. But nothing much for the past many many months. But I was reading up on the Tyson fight coming up tomorrow night and his latest column on his viewing of Cinderella Man caught my eye. I love his sports movie reviews.
My favorite part of the column was the ending where he closed in some nice old school Sports Guy fashion.
Anyway, "Cinderella Man" got me thinking ...Ha! That would be sweet.
My Comcast cable system carries about 75 movie channels. HBO alone is represented with eight different channels: HBO, HBO2, HBO3, HBO On Demand, HBO Family, HBO Comedy, HBO HDTV and HBO Latino – my favorite, because I've seen "Boogie Nights" so many times, the only way I can enjoy it anymore is by watching it in another language. Soy la estrella más grande aquí! Usted no es el jefe de mí! But I always find myself wishing that they distinguished the channels better than the generic brand names. For instance, I watched "Copland" last weekend on a channel called "Encore Mystery," which was funny in itself (that they actually spun off Encore). But you know what you're getting with Encore Mystery. You're getting mysteries. Same with HBO Comedy or Black Starz (another one of my favorites, since you could never get away with a channel called White Starz).
So why not go further? Why can't every channel more clearly define its territory? HBO 2 could change its name to HBO Inferior. Cinemax 2 could become The Naked Channel. I want a Big Stars Channel (just Eastwood, Cruise, Stallone and the other megastars). I want a Sports Movies Channel, an Unintentional Comedy Channel, even a Mafia Movie Channel. Most of all, I want an Unrealized Potential Channel (UPC for short) for movies that should have been fantastic but somehow left you strangely disappointed. "Copland" was definitely like that for me (the ending was too preposterous). Same with "Casino," "He Got Game," "Beverly Hills Cop 2," "Boomerang," "Can't Hardly Wait," "Magnolia," "Any Given Sunday," "Ransom," "Ali" and about 250 other movies that bothered me even as I was somewhat enjoying them.
I know one of his biggest dreams is to have his own ESPN channel. Specifically, ESPN 8 — The Ocho he'd call it. Oh how I'd love to see the programming on that channel.
cable is such a scam, i end up paying 50 bucks to comcast each month but still don't get HBO
Posted by: Jatin | June 10, 2005 at 08:45 PM
how do you email sports guy? i can't seem to find the address
Posted by: chrsi | June 15, 2005 at 11:14 PM