My Night as a Talking Head

So last night was spent in 90+ minutes of pretty good conver- sation about sports, that just happened to be filmed for a Web site. You'll see it linked here as soon as it's available, and I'm going to try to steer clear from the navel-gazing about my own performance to talk to something that might be more interesting.

The actual experience was strangely comfortable, for a situation where you are being filmed in a professional 3-camera shoot, and pretending like you've known the people you are talking with for more than five minutes. We sat in a semi-circle at a table, the host (Jeff Johnson) went through some topics he'd prepared in advance, and boom goes the dynamite. Nerves went away pretty quickly, really.

It's a common thing in the sports blogosphere to rail against ESPN, aka the World Wide Leader, known in these here parts as the World Wide Lemur, because I'm just kind of obsessed with those creatures, and just like the sound of the word. (Whenever the word "leader" or "believer" comes up in popular music, my mind substitutes "Lemur" and "Big Lemur." Try it for yourself. "Then I saw her face / Now I'm a Big Lemur..." See? Yes, I have issues. Moving on...)

The Lemur films their talking head shows, and it's all braying jackassery, lowest common denominator dumbness, frat boys with the fake laughter, and if you are anything like me, you get The Cringing, and then the Spinal Issues, because your body is in open revolt at having anything in common with these lemurs. They're clearly mammals, bipeds, vertebrates and most likely chordates, and all of that is far more in common with your own damn self for comfort.

But since all of the stuff on the tee vee is like that, there just seems to be an inevitability to it, really. That must be what people like, since that's what's served up. You must really be an outlier, freak, weird monkey, to think this is all horrific and banal and terrible, and long for something better. Please stop thinking so much about whatever it is that you were thinking about -- sports and politics for me, but I'm sure many people feel the same way about cooking shows or women's issues or movie reviews or whatever else gets chatted over, on camera, at length.

And then Jeff Johnson comes along, with his VBS crew, and invites four (five if you count me, not that I'm saying you should) smart and snarky and well-read bloggers to go through the points he's selected in advance, and it's not like that at all, really. I found myself laughing genuinely, and so did the crew, at a lot of stuff. The time passed quickly, so much so that after Jeff's cards were up, we all just pretty much kept going, both on and off camera. No one felt the need to scream, pick a transparent fight, plug their site or selves or pull any other kind of dick move. None of us were even morbidly obese, constantly referencing our own days back when we were athletes (as if), or wearing a bad rug on our head. It went against all the rules, really.

Whether or not it was entertaining for other people is for other people to judge, of course... but it sure felt like a good product to me, like something I'd set the DVR for. And more importantly, it gave me hope that not only might there be an audience for people who think about sports, but that there are others who actually do it. That the braying jackasses aren't inevitable. That the Lemur and Fox and all of the other mouth jobs don't have a monopoly any more, not with the web, and that entering that form of media doesn't have to mean checking your brain and integrity at the door.

So thanks, Jeff and VBS, for inviting me, and thanks to my fellow panelists for being, well, really good. I'd gladly do it again, and only hope I was up to your standards. (And if not, well, I'm just glad that I had one more platform to crack on Kevin Everett and Sean Taylor's Ghost. A man's got to stand up for what he believes in.)