THE BLOG WISER HOT SEAT: SIMON ON SPORTS

by Rupert, Ghosts of Wayne Fontes

It's another round of ye olde Blog Wiser Hot Seat today at Epic Carnival. This is your chance as well as ours to get to know the residents at this here site on a much more personal level. Today's guest is one of the hardest working folks in the blog business. Actually, I should probably say the blog charity, because none of us make dick. Simon is the Dunder Miflin of blogs, “Endless Paper for a Paperless World.” Anyway, we’re excited to rap with Simon from Simon on Sports today about a whole slew of nonsense.

Ghosts: I couldn’t help but notice that you mention that nobody looked better than Bill Walton in a Celtics’ Jersey. Are you a big Walton fan? Do you have a specific Waltonism that holds a special place in your memories?

Simon: I’m a bit too young to have fully appreciated Walton as a Celtic or Walton as a player really, but when I think ideal Celtic I think of a shaggy haired redhead who wears an occasional beard.

Additionally, I’m a bit biased as I went through a 5 month phase in college where I pulled a Royal Tannenbaum’s / Walton and let my red fro grow out, grew a beard and wore headbands daily.

Ghosts: As you are a fan of the footy, or futbol as us good Yanks prefer to call it, who do you like to take the FA Cup this year? Who’s your favorite squadron in the Premiership or any other Liga for that matter?

Simon: This probably out there, but I’d probably go with Liverpool, yes the team that was just losing to janitors for 30 minutes. Obviously the FA Cup is highly important to all teams that play in England but coming into the final weeks of the season Man U and Arsenal will probably be in a heated battle for the biggest prize, the Premiership, and will shift their focus there, well the one that survives their 5th round clash at least.

My squad of choice is Chelsea. I went to London in 02 for an abroad college trip with limited knowledge of the Premiership and figured to adopt a capital squad. At the time Arsenal was the dominant London team, and their fans seemed like pompous assholes, so I eliminated them. It came down to Chelsea or Tottenham and I chose Chelsea after finding out my father’s friend had season tickets. But then my father lost their phone # so I never ended up going to a game.

Ghosts: February 6th is coming up and you and I both know what that means, signing day. How do like Michigan’s chances at inking Terrelle Pryor?

Simon: 50/50. And he’s probably the most crucial recruit in Michigan history from a standpoint that right now they have a lot of rebuilding to do on the offensive side of the ball and with no current quarterback to run the new offense. He truly could be a 2 or 3 game win loss swing for the 2008 Wolverines which to me makes his decision the most interesting thing in sports between the Superbowl and March Madness.

Ghosts: Do you think he is capable of living up to all the hype, particularly as a freshman?

Simon: I think the hype is a little bit skewed. Sure dorks like myself, all Ohio St. and Michigan fans, as well as hardcore college football fans know who he is and who he is expected to be but for the general public most have no idea. He’ll just be amongst the others #1 recruits that come into school, occasionally they’ll mention it on the TV broadcast.

Do I think he will succeed in his freshman year if he is a Wolverine? Yes. Him and the Great White Hope on the surface would appear to be the ideal candidates to run the Rod Spread. Does that mean beating the Buckeyes or winning the Big 10 or doing anything the Chad Henne era couldn’t accomplish? Probably not.

Ghosts: Do you have a good concert story you would care to share?

Simon: Not a concert story, but on my first trip to Fenway I ended up vomiting on a woman and getting kicked out. I think that’s how all Yankee fans should do it.

Ghosts: What was/is your favorite Saturday morning cartoon and character?

Simon: That’s an easy one. Transformers and Starscream. I used to get up at 5:30 every school day so I could watch Transformer re-runs on the Sci-Fi channel.

Ghosts: Last week, Neate and I talked about the psychological ups and downs of blogging. How are you feeling about your site and your progress in the Sphere these days?

Simon: I originally started blogging cause of my friends and boredom at the actual job. Some of my buddies kept on telling me I should write something cause all I talked about was sports and eventually I just decided to do it figuring at the very least it will just be a historic capture of my thoughts on stuff so I could reference it in years past. That was in May 06. And it stayed that way for a few months just me writing and a few of my friends reading and then I got a link for The Big Lead. And there’s just something addicting about see those hits on Statcounter.

But sometimes the search for hits is unsatisfactory. For instance last week I was listening to the Stephen A show, don’t ask why, and I heard him announce he has a website. I checked around the blogosphere realized that no one knew about this wrote up a quick post sent it to a few big boys and wallah my biggest ‘Ballhype’ ranked post ever. Did that take any skill or anything at all? Will I look back on that post and think well that was a great one? Absolutely not, so there are sometimes where you end up getting a lot of hits and you think to yourself man I wish that happened when I wrote something I really liked, something I didn’t just post so I could bring people to my site.

But for the most part I still write things for myself and for my friends. The Scalabrine Watch is the perfect example. Anyone outside of my friends and myself probably could give two shits how much Brian Scalabrine sucks a dong. But I need to verify to myself that he’s the worst basketball player in the history of the human race.

Another thing that I think is a big downer for bloggers is when you have time, which isn’t too often for myself given the 40 hour job and the part time MBA classes, and you want to write and you can’t think of anything to write. Sitting and staring blankly at a computer screen is annoying. Which is why I pretty much post up any requests I get.

Well that answer was all over the place, which pretty much sums up the blogging world well.

Ghosts: Where do you see Epic Carnival 6 months from now? Think Doug is selling us out for Lindsay Lohan?

Simon: I’m not sure. I did just get my 17-dollar check in the mail. So hopefully there will be 3000 more of those and I’ll have a second full time job. Ha.

Ghosts: What is your favorite card in your old sportscard collection?

Simon: For sentimental reasons a C-Webb rookie card. C-Webb and the Fab Five is the reason that I became a Wolverine fan and he’s been my favorite hoopster since.

For humor purposes I have a Curt Schilling rookie card and he was still fat 20 years ago but he had an added stupid pencil thin mustache to make him like extra douche.

Ghosts: When you think back to the innovations you expected the Earth to have by the year 2008, what’s the most disappointing thing that’s currently missing?

Simon: I think the simplest thing I would have hoped for was a faster and safer car. Driving 55 on these local highways still is way too annoying and time consuming.

Ghosts: Is this an exciting Super Bowl for you? MVP prediction? Any other weird prop bet predictions?

Simon: An exciting Super Bowl, if you call devastation and projected ridicule for eternity exciting then yes. Going to college in Mass means I have way too many friends who will enjoy ribbing me about how they are the greatest team of all time for which I will have no legit come back.

I gave With-Malice a 34-23 Pats prediction with Vrabel as the MVP.

As for prop bets here are a few.

• The number of times Tiki Barber is mentioned.


• The number of times Eli throws his hand up into the air in his aww shucks manner.


• The number of times Brandon Jacobs either trucks or jukes Rodney Harrison again.


• The number of eye gouges by Patriot D-Lineman.


• Whether or not Belichick wears the cut off hoodie.

Ghosts: If you have to bring a dish to pass to a Super Bowl party what are you bringing? I’ll tell you mine, since I’m gay like that. Assorted dumplings from any Asian restaurant.

Simon: Simple Bagel Bites always do the trick for me. Plus I don’t have to cook them.

Ghosts: How inebriated do you usually get for the Super Bowl?

Simon: The level varies, however this year I have class on both Saturday and Sunday from 9-3 and given the Patriots probable win I fully expect to evaporate portions of my memory at some hour.

Ghosts: Finally, this is kind of a random one, but do have any rules in any sports that you would like to change?

Simon: Dump instant replay. Sure it works most of the time, but those times when they still get the god damn call wrong pisses me off a million times more. You just watched the video 40 times and you still are too blind to get the call right. Or just stop screwing up.

Dump the Force out call in the NFL. It’s such a fickle call. Sometimes they’ll give it and than when the Jets need it on a last second play they don’t call it. At the very least add it to reviewable if you don’t dump that.

Illegal Contact. I hate penalties that ‘can’ be called on every player but are only subjectively called when the Patriots face a third and long throw an incompletion and are in need of a penalty to garner a 1st down.

Introduce 1&1 FTs in the NBA. It’s one of my favorite parts of college basketball sweating out that first free throw to see if you can get another.

I’m sure if I put my head to it I could think of a ton of other rules that bother me. But we’ll leave it here.

Ghosts: Alright buddy. Thanks a million for taking the time to chat with us and more so for your great work at Epic Carnival. It was a real pleasure. Until next time folks, we bid you so long.