A Clip Of Buzz, Leitch And Some Mime

Awful Announcing has posted part of the clip of Buzz Bissinger’s rant about how much he hates the Internet and “Big Daddy Balls” last night. (I also loved how the topic was just “The Internet.”) This particular clip is even better because a reminder for a documentary about NOFX (NOFX!) is plasted on the bottom of it the entire time, a reminder that television is inherently a better medium than the Internet.

Cleveland Browns wideout Braylon Edwards is also there, but doesn’t say anything of note, doesn’t blog and doesn’t have any teammates who blog.

Internet Media Segment [Awful Announcing]

Buzz To Blogs: Get Off My Lawn!

Buzz Bissinger — writer of Friday Night Lights, chronicler of Barbaro, inventor of high school football racism — was on Costas Now last night on a panel with Will Leitch (editor of Deadspin) and Braylon Edwards (Cleveland Browns wide receiver).

If you didn’t see it, Bissinger went on a rant about blogs, asked Will Leitch if he had ever read W.C. Heinz, called him full of shit and also said this: “This guy, whether we like it or not, is the future. The future in the hands of guys like you is really going to dumb us down to a degree that I don’t think we can recover from.”

Let me write about the W.C. Heinz reference for a moment. Heinz is famous for writing “Death of a Racehorse,” a 1,000-word piece about how a dying racehorse. In contrast, Bissinger’s column on Barbaro was 13,000 words. (Update: Hey, I made the comments of Fire Joe Morgan!)

I will say that I don’t — can’t! — believe that Bissinger was serious last night. This whole ‘blogs-vs.-newspapers’ debate is so, uhm, 2005, maybe earlier. By 2006 Phillymag (Phillymag!) had given my blog a B+ rating and that was back when PWD was even worse. Blogs are a medium: Most of them suck, some of them are good — just like newspaper columnists and TV shows and movies and penny-farthings and cheeseburgers. (The only two things that are mostly good are sex and pizza.) Right? Right?

Then again, maybe not. PW Music Editor Brian McManus was recently on a music panel with Tom Moon; the former Inquirer music writer read the Pitchfork review of In Rainbows and angrily ranted about it afterward. And this is another good ex-Inquirer writer!

It might just be as simple as what a friend told me this morning: “They’re all just bitter that they didn’t think of writing The Wire.” Well put.

Update 2: Jon Weisman has more on this. And Enrico has more too.

Respected Writer Writes De Facto Barbaro Book

Unbelievably, Barbaro still lives. America’s Favorite Horse™ is back in the current edition of Vanity Fair, with a 13,000-word profile of Barbaro by “Buzz” Bissinger. (Oh, yeah, via Philebrity, it’s also becoming a movie.)

Since it’s 13,000 words about fucking Barbaro, I’ve come up with a pretty good way to enjoy this, I think. With the help of reader R.J. White, I present The “Buzz” Bissinger 13,000-Word Barbaro Article Drinking Game.

Take a sip when:

• Barbaro’s “spirit” is mentioned.
• A phrase — i.e. “Never fall in love with a horse” — is repeated for dramatic effect.
• The reaction after a plane crash is compared with the reaction after a horse’s injury.
• Barbaro’s original jockey is forgotten like that.

Take a gulp when:

• Barbaro is given a human emotion, such as joy. (Take two if there’s a double whammy cliche, such as “joy and abandon.”)
• Barbaro is compared to a human. (Take two if he’s compared to a legendary sports figure.)
• Barbaro is given a human talent, such as communication. (Take two if his communication is translated into English and it isn’t something like “I want an apple.”)
• A phrase — i.e. “Never fall in love with a horse” — then comes back later in the story for dramatic effect. (Take two if, later, a different person falls in love with a Barbaro despite trying not to.)

More of the game and selected quotes from the article continue below.

More »

A Much Buzzed-About Tuesday Debut

Tonight is the premiere of Friday Night Lights — yeah, on a Tuesday — the new NBC show based on the movie and book by writer Buzz Bissinger.

Last month, Bissinger talked with Dan Gross and expressed his pleasure at the show, as well as his displeasure with a few other high school football teams on screen:

H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger says he loved the pilot for NBC’s upcoming series “Friday Night Lights,” based on his book about high school football in Texas, but the Chestnut Hill author refuses to watch MTV’s “Two-A-Days.”

He feels the reality series, about an Alabama high school football team, ripped off his book. He also never saw “Varsity Blues,” a football film that he also felt had been taken from his work.

Indeed. You see, Varsity Blues had a coach who didn’t like the black kid, and Buzz invented high school football racism in Friday Night Lights.

However, it appears Bissinger is not being all that truthful. You see, there are rampant similarities between Friday Night Lights and Matt Christopher’s 1984 novel The Great Quarterback Switch.

There is nothing that really separates the books. One is about the a Texas town and its football team and the other is about a paralyzed twin who manages to use ESP to switch with his brother on the football field. Nothing different.

Bissinger loves and snubs [Daily News]