Also, Robert's grandmother on his dad's side was a Targaryen so he loosely had a claim to the throne from his bloodline - this is mentioned a few times throughout the book.

Haha, this thread is great - all of us who like sports and have discerning taste seem to agree we read Simmons because he is the best of the over-ripe pile of dogshit that is internet sports commentary and is capable of moments of brilliance when so few others are.

With all that said, the thing that kills me is that there is no AVClub equivalent for sports-writing on the internet. There are some good writers out there and some good sites (again, mostly metrics-based sites), but no place that can functionally give me a place to go multi-sports information/perspective.

Put me squarely in the used to love Simmons and now mostly find him irritating as shit-mold. That said, he still has some good podcasts, entirely dependent on the guest, and I enjoy his NBA material (remove the dipshit Dave references from the most recent article and it was well done and provocative).

Chris Hardwick was also in a fraternity, as was Paul Rudd, Will Ferrell and a whole fuck-ton of other famous comedians, actors, directors, etc. That information is meaningless.

Agreed, I love Street Hassle - the first three tracks are all great. But, I'm an unmitigated Lou Reed-a-phile so I'm probably a bad judge of what makes the list as a "gateway."

Some people just can't seem to let things go…
Get over it 2Pac! It's been 15 years for fuck's sake.

In college we had Lee Harvey Bongswald - it would make your brain splatter all over the place.

Just finished re-reading the Sandman books from start-to-finish last month…and I agree with the above that I tend to re-read graphic novels more often than traditional books, but I have a couple I re-read fairly consistently:

Generally, I'm with the consensus on Woody (Bananas, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Hannah are my faves), but I will always have a huge soft spot for "What's Up, Tiger Lilly?" I saw it my freshmen year of college back in my heavy pot smoking days and my roommate and I became obsessed with quoting all of the zany one-liners for…

So, making a sports analogy with something in pop culture is ripping off Bill Simmons? Or did I actually, accidentally, steal that exact comparison? I don't read him, so I don't know.

The Robert Horry of rap
He may not have been the best player on the team at any point in his career, or even an All Star, but damn if he didn't contribute to a lot of great songs (especially in his heyday from '93 to '97).

@Rasil - Seriously, Wheel of Time? That series started off great, but then rode a avalanche of dreadful writing, stagnant characters, bad plot twists and extreme long-windedness straight off a cliff into a never-ending pile of shit.

And for someone who used to write for a living, that was a fucking atrocious run-on sentence. Yeesh…

Nerd Rage
I love me some R.R. and am looking forward to the series finally moving forward, but I almost hope that the book gets pushed back again so that nerds everywhere (i.e. the internet) revolt leading to him pulling the plug entirely and no one ever finding out what the fuck happened to Brienne.

Oh shit, The Coup is ridiculous - how are they live though? That album will always remain on rotation on my iPod.

Not me re: Sit Down, Man.

God damn it - double posts are the worst.

I saw Ozomatli with a different MC - Charlie 2na was touring J5 at the time. This was waaayyy back in 2000 or so, but that show still stands out with Joe Strummer at the Metro and LCD Soundsystem at Pitchfork as the best concerts/live shows I've ever seen.

It wasn't Charlie 2na, but a different MC who was pretty good. This was back in probably '01, so it's been a minute.