Podcast Week

Kate will regularly catch me looking intently at my computer, assuming, I'm sure, that her boyfriend is watching porn. Most of the time, she's wrong. When I've got the game face on, and the MacBook is radiating cancer waves towards my brain and groin, the screen is usually showing Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy - a regular columnist for ESPN. He, along with European Style Rice Pudding, are my go-to vices. Try to give me Rick Reilly or regular style pudding, and I'm not interested. The BS report and proper Kozy Shack? I'm in. Hooked.

Simmons is a total homer, living and dying with the Boston sports scene. He was writing for Kimmel for a while, and is a huge fan of movies, pop culture, and Chuck Klosterman. If you can lump all of that into an insightful column about basketball, I'm in. He does a fair share of written stuff for ESPN, and I obviously highly recommend keeping up, but the winners are his podcasts. I throw a few of those on my iPod and have killer entertainment for my bus/train rides to and from Denver. I'm not going to try to sell you on it with too many specifics, but I'll recount one recent show where his buddy Joe House was a guest on the podcast. Joe was praising Subway, the sponsor of the podcasts, and was quoted, albeit highly out of context, as saying "12 inch double meat is my thing." I like that he and his guest have a sense of humor of that. Also, I like anyone who has figured out how to make a living by writing about what they really like, calling their friends, and broadcasting the conversations to a nationwide audience. Oh, and getting paid like crazy.

His podcasts typically get released a few times a week, but a while ago he did a podcast week where everyday saw a new...um...."episode" was released. What do you call an individual podcast? Installment? Show? Whatever. Another interesting twist about podcast week was that Thursday came and went without a podcast. Instead, he wrote an article for ESPN the Magazine about the trading deadline and Baron Davis. The principle of the effort inspired me, and the inability to stick to it struck a chord of resonance. I like to think that I write a lot, but usually I get busy and forget to do much, only coming up with new material when my mom writes me an email asking me how my ringworm is doing, if I've washed my hair, and why I haven't written anything on the blog in a while. This one's for mom.

I am announcing PattyP's Blogcast week. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to post every day for a week. I can't guarantee that the installments will be very long, or that the episodes will be interesting (although how much of a departure from everyday reality would that be?), but I can promise that there will be something new up with regularity.

Of course, I reserve the ability to skip one day, principally in homage to my writing hero.

If anyone has anything they'd like me to expound upon, just let me know. Post a comment, send and email, call me up...whatever. If I get ideas, I can nearly guarantee that they'll find their way into e-print. Hell, Hans just had basically an entire post that revolved around him, and even mentioned him by name. If you wanna blow up like Mr. Swolfs, you gotta call hit me up.

Lastly, I'm going on record as saying I sincerely dislike Chris Paul. He seems like one of those guys who you'd play against back in high school who was good, but who's main goal was to be a nuisance and general burr under your saddle. That's all. See ya tomorrow.