LCBInsider: Unfounded Rumors

-Bill Simmons takes a break from educating under privileged children, feeding the poor, and harboring Libyan refugees with his mighty sportswriting pen to express his disappointment that a once in a lifetime talent like Will Smith only makes movies that make money but fail to challenge the actor or his audience. The art of Simmons' editorial is that it conjures up parallels between the talented actor and the sports guy himself; after all, he has used one of the biggest pulpits a writer can have to analyze Rotten Tomato popularity polls and to reveal the secrets behind the NBA's Trade Machine.

Fries and Ketchup: The Felice Brothers, Wes Anderson, and Bill Simmons

Music:

If Bob Dylan's Christmas in My Heart has you longing for his younger days, then check out The Felice Brothers, and yes, I know the comparison is a lazy one to make.

Are bands shooting videos with cell phone cameras now? Either of their albums (The Felice Brothers or Yonder is the Clock) would make nice stocking stuffers for the kids.

Film:

When it comes to traditional "Oscar-worthy" films, 2009 hasn't had much to offer. Invictus and Up in the Air might prove me wrong. It just seems kind of funny that in a year where Oscar expanded their number of nominations there seems to be a shortage of deserving films. Anyway, for my money, two films that deserve nominations are The Hangover and The Amazing Mr. Fox, and with ten nominations, it seems the Academy could be a little more adventurous than the BCS (there's a column brewing in that thought). Anyway, I think Fantastic Mr. Fox is Wes Anderson's best and most complete film. Go see it now. George Clooney is pure gold, and no one else could have done the voice for this cussin' role. Whistle. ck. ck.

Links:

Our friends over at Deckfight unveiled their best albums of 2009 list.

Folse rambles about the divides of hip hop over at Where's My Wave Dude?, leading into his thoughts on the rapper DECA. I never thought I'd see a rap video featuring windmills.

T.A.N. gives us some examples of terrible rapping.

Dan Wetzel, of Yahoo!Sports, writes one of the few interesting articles about the Tiger Woods debacle. I'm not calling it Tiger Zoo after Bill Simmons wasted my time with half an essay that arrived nowhere, which actually captures the Tiger story perfectly, so I apologize, Bill--job well done.

For more on Bill Simmons, check out Sam Anderson, Sherman Alexie, Bethlehem Shoals, Jonathan Lethem, Tommy Craggs, and Ben Mathis-Lilley breaking down, critiquing, analyzing, admiring, and crapping all over Simmons' latest book, only to conclude that, yes, The Sports Guys is a good writer.

Rick Reilly takes aim at Simmons

Since his arrival at ESPN, Rick Reilly has been making more and more announcements, most of them bashing blogs and most of them talking about how old school you are. But if you are really old school, do you have to tell everyone? Doesn't telling people how great things were when you were young, just make you old? Well now he is taking a shot at a coworker. This is from Jon Friedman's "On Media"column about Reilly's jump to ESPN

Old school-new school. I'm not doing more than 800 words, I'm not from Boston, I don't write a lot about the NBA. I'm more likely to tell a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end. He's a blogger. I still love reading him."

Not to long ago Bill Simmons told his sneering view of ESPN and Reilly and it actually seems to have some merit.

“I don’t even care about the money (he’s making). I care about the fact he only
has to write 800 words all week. What does he do all week? I’m just getting
warmed up at 800 words.”

Simmons added

“I don’t think (his hiring) has really changed my life in any way
other than he touches my soul with his writing. That’s really it. He’s raising
the bar morally, financially. . . he’s raising it all over the place. I’m just
happy to be along for the ride.”

In recent weeks Reilly has let known his thoughts about the blogging community, and they were two things, unoriginal and unfunny. I have never been that big of a fan of Simmons, but Reilly is turning me into one. But he is "old school" and heres hoping to see an all-out melee happen between Simmons and Reilly

Courtesy of:
Deadspin Rick Reilly Continues To Not Think Too Highly Of That Billy Simmons Kid

MarketWatch Rick Reilly is ESPNs new sports guy