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Chuck Klosterman Readers

JimBeamJimBeam Seattle. 2,012 Posts
edited June 2007 in Strut Central
Anyone read this dude/douches books?I picked one up on a whim, and I'm about split. half the time, it's decent, pretty introspective stuff. He does have the ability to use someone else's experience as a subject to take the reader through a look at themselves (often, by lining himself up in the crossfire, pointing out his own shortcomings.)The other half of the time I am thinking: SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU GLIB, SMUG DOUCHE. GOD DAMMIT. OOOOOOOOOOHHH, YOU WRITE ABOUT INDIE ROCK AND SHARED GENERATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND FEATHER YOUR HAIR AND HAVE DECLARED YOURSELF BETTER THAN EVERYONE. PLEASE TO TAKE YOUR MOUTH OFF.What I am impressed by, a little over 200 pages into this:is the total polarization of my reactions. There is a complete lack of

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  • tonyphronetonyphrone 1,500 Posts
    Anyone read this dude/douches books?
    I picked one up on a whim, and I'm about split. half the time, it's decent, pretty introspective stuff. He does have the ability to use someone else's experience as a subject to take the reader through a look at themselves (often, by lining himself up in the crossfire, pointing out his own shortcomings.)
    The other half of the time I am thinking: SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU GLIB, SMUG DOUCHE. GOD DAMMIT. OOOOOOOOOOHHH, YOU WRITE ABOUT INDIE ROCK AND SHARED GENERATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND FEATHER YOUR HAIR AND HAVE DECLARED YOURSELF BETTER THAN EVERYONE. PLEASE TO TAKE YOUR MOUTH OFF.

    What I am impressed by, a little over 200 pages into this:

    is the total polarization of my reactions. There is a complete lack of


    I feel exactly the same way. I just finished Killing myself to live, and I cant decide if it's my favorite book or complete trash?????
  • mrmatthewmrmatthew 1,575 Posts
    PLEASE TO TAKE YOUR MOUTH OFF.

  • JimBeamJimBeam Seattle. 2,012 Posts
    the thing that really kills me is the constant "he writes about music and culture the same way

    wrote about politics!!!"

    UGH. not havin that shit at all. not even on the same level.
  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    for a guy who writes about a lot of shitty music i could care less about, he is fascinating in a weird way. i possess Fargo Rock City and Sex, Drugs, Etc., and i liked 'em both. havent sought out the rest of his bibliography yet

    hes like a gentler chuck eddy (and THAT guy's schtick gets mighty old)
  • funky16cornersfunky16corners 7,175 Posts
    the thing that really kills me is the constant "he writes about music and culture the same way

    wrote about politics!!!"

    UGH. not havin that shit at all. not even REMOTELY[/b]on the same level.

    Having read a few of his books, and seeing his stuff frequently in mags, I can safely say I can't stand him.
  • noznoz 3,625 Posts
    Cee-Lo's head is bald, and his limbs are freakishly huge; his wristwatch looked as large as a wall clock. He is covered with tattoos. One is the familiar symbol of yin and yang. Another is the logo of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Another is the word "BLOOD." When I sat down with Cee-Lo, I asked him if the BLOOD tattoo meant he was a gang member, and he said it did not. This denial, however, was not particularly convincing.
  • JimBeamJimBeam Seattle. 2,012 Posts
    Cee-Lo's head is bald, and his limbs are freakishly huge; his wristwatch looked as large as a wall clock. He is covered with tattoos. One is the familiar symbol of yin and yang. Another is the logo of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Another is the word "BLOOD." When I sat down with Cee-Lo, I asked him if the BLOOD tattoo meant he was a gang member, and he said it did not. This denial, however, was not particularly convincing.
    please tell me that this is not a real quote.
    i'm gonna go strangle someone on the street now.
  • faux_rillzfaux_rillz 14,343 Posts
    Cee-Lo's head is bald, and his limbs are freakishly huge; his wristwatch looked as large as a wall clock. He is covered with tattoos. One is the familiar symbol of yin and yang. Another is the logo of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Another is the word "BLOOD." When I sat down with Cee-Lo, I asked him if the BLOOD tattoo meant he was a gang member, and he said it did not. This denial, however, was not particularly convincing.
    please tell me that this is not a real quote.

    i'm gonna go strangle someone on the street now.

    Oh, but it is--I think it appeared in GQ originally.

    I find this guy absolutely loathsome.
  • noznoz 3,625 Posts
    Cee-Lo's head is bald, and his limbs are freakishly huge; his wristwatch looked as large as a wall clock. He is covered with tattoos. One is the familiar symbol of yin and yang. Another is the logo of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Another is the word "BLOOD." When I sat down with Cee-Lo, I asked him if the BLOOD tattoo meant he was a gang member, and he said it did not. This denial, however, was not particularly convincing.
    please tell me that this is not a real quote.

    i'm gonna go strangle someone on the street now.

    Oh, but it is--I think it appeared in GQ originally.

    NYT Magazine, actually.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/magazine/18barkley.html?ex=1182398400&en=de579776aee87edb&ei=5070
  • JimBeamJimBeam Seattle. 2,012 Posts
    Cee-Lo's head is bald, and his limbs are freakishly huge; his wristwatch looked as large as a wall clock. He is covered with tattoos. One is the familiar symbol of yin and yang. Another is the logo of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Another is the word "BLOOD." When I sat down with Cee-Lo, I asked him if the BLOOD tattoo meant he was a gang member, and he said it did not. This denial, however, was not particularly convincing.
    please tell me that this is not a real quote.

    i'm gonna go strangle someone on the street now.

    Oh, but it is--I think it appeared in GQ originally.
    This is really bugging me. He got paid to write that. And I'm in a damn cubicle looking at spreadsheets.
    Who's the real idiot?
  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    Cee-Lo's head is bald, and his limbs are freakishly huge; his wristwatch looked as large as a wall clock. He is covered with tattoos. One is the familiar symbol of yin and yang. Another is the logo of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Another is the word "BLOOD." When I sat down with Cee-Lo, I asked him if the BLOOD tattoo meant he was a gang member, and he said it did not. This denial, however, was not particularly convincing.
    haha came here to post that quote
  • cascas 1,484 Posts

    He got paid to write that. And I'm in a damn cubicle looking at spreadsheets.

    let's take it to the microsoft excel spreadsheet olympics.
    son, you ain't ready for my shift-tab action.




    pasue.
  • kitchenknightkitchenknight 4,922 Posts
    I think this article is fucking unfuckwittable. Leave off the hip hop, and stick to sports and Hecher Heat:



    From Feb. 2007, Esquire:



    Chuck Klosterman's America: Life After Halftime
    By Chuck Klosterman
    Jazz-Age drunkard F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote many trenchant thoughts in the somber days before his 1940 death, but few remain more famous than this one: "There are no second acts in American lives." It is the kind of sentence that defines an ethos. Many less-talented writers have since echoed this sentiment in stories of their own, typically in the introductory paragraphs of celebrity profiles and inevitably as a means for pointing out how inaccurate Fitzgerald actually was.

    In reality, there are lots of second acts in American life; it's what happens to everybody who isn't a) hyperprecocious and b) prone to drinking oneself into the boneyard. It's not that second acts are nonexistent; they're usually just less interesting than the first. If your life's first act is "hospital administrator," your life's second act will typically be "veteran hospital administrator." Such a narrative arc lacks panache.

    This, however, is not true for everyone. Some hospital administrators get to spend their middle 40s flying around the country analyzing other hospital administrators, although in this instance I am inexplicably using the words "hospital administrator" as a metaphor for the word "athlete." There are few professions more rarefied than that of the color commentator; it's perhaps the only job for which you aren't qualified intellectually unless you've already achieved success in a vaguely related physical context. If these guidelines were applied to all aspects of life, it would be impossible to become an architect unless you had already spent 12 years chopping down trees and building log cabins.

    Members of the media are often criticized on the grounds that bookish writers can't understand a game they've never truly played, but it seems like this argument should work both ways; I'm not sure why playing (or even coaching) a sport necessarily authorizes someone to talk about it on television. Howard Cosell used to refer to this phenomenon as the "jockocracy," and Howard forever felt insulted that he was forced to broadcast games alongside men who had merely played halfback for the New York Giants. This is a coherent argument, but it also illustrates why people in the 1970s used to throw bricks at their TVs during Monday Night Football games. Nobody likes a guy who complains about the hardship of his own genius.

    In my view, it's unfair to rate color commentators against conventional broadcast journalists like Bob Costas or Al Michaels; it would be no different from criticizing Brent Musburger for having an inconsistent jump shot. While Brad Nessler is still experiencing the first act of his life, someone like Moose Johnston is merely figuring out how to manage the second act he fell into after retirement. I think the only valid way to gauge the aptitude of an analyst is by measuring the man against himself: Is his life's second act on par with its first? Is he better at the job he always wanted, or is he better at the job he ended up with?

    These are my findings:

    Troy Aikman: As the winner of three Super Bowls and a member of the Hall of Fame, it would (superficially) seem like Aikman must have been better on the turf than he is in the broadcast booth. But here's the rub: Even during his best season (probably 1992), Aikman was never the number-one QB in the league (or even in the NFC). He is, however, the most competent pro-football analyst currently on the market. He doesn't talk too much, and he always seems reasonable, the two rarest qualities in modern broadcasting. Better as a broadcaster.

    Bill Walton: A megalomaniac whose insights often seem wholly unrelated to the game he's actively watching, Walton has an on-air persona that can be akin to Jerry Garcia vomiting through a version of "Sugar Magnolia." That said, the Red Rocker is fearless and unpredictable, and the fact that Walton overcame a childhood stutter makes his loquaciousness something of a marvel. Still, this guy (when healthy) was probably the most complete post player who ever lived; he'll never argue with Snapper Jones as efficiently as he threw outlet passes to Larry Steele. Better as a player.

    Phil Simms: A slightly underrated quarterback, a slightly overrated analyst. Knowledgeable but overly conventional. He seems like a fictional announcer from a football movie I wouldn't pay to see. Better as a player.

    Tim McCarver: Though he finished second in the voting for the 1967 National League MVP, McCarver was a journeyman best remembered for being Steve Carlton's personal catcher during much of the 1970s. As a broadcaster, he is a stubborn polymath with an uncanny propensity for predicting when broken-bat singles are about to occur. McCarver is regularly criticized for saying what already seems abundantly obvious, but then again, a lot of people who watch baseball on TV are f**king idiots. Better as a broadcaster.

    Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith: I love these guys, but I'm still not sure if either ever says anything that actually makes sense. Barkley's fundamental shtick is reminding viewers that the game they're currently watching sucks, which (I guess) is "refreshing." What's more compelling is that Charles still seems to struggle with the fact that Smith won two NBA titles and he never won any. They're the most consistently entertaining studio team on television, but Chaz was the second-best forward of his era (and Kenny could play some, too). This is a push.

    Ron Jaworski: Because he played for the Philadelphia Eagles, "Jaws" spent much of his career being booed by troglodytes who looked forward to a day when they could throw D batteries at Joe Pisarcik. He was league MVP once (1980), but he threw too many interceptions in the clutch; he's now the most aggressively intellectual analyst on ESPN's roster, but he seems to take fantasy football too seriously. This is also a push.

    Jay Bilas: Bilas is an eerily confident combination of Jim Nantz and Will Arnett. He had a very nice basketball career at Duke, but mostly because he played with Johnny Dawkins. Better as a broadcaster.

    Joe Morgan: Peerless second baseman, inexplicably biased commentator (or at least according to every drunk I ever met in northeast Ohio). Better as a player.

    Gary Danielson: This one's tricky. In my memory, Danielson was a nonplaying nonfactor for a bunch of terrible Detroit Lions squads (and one of the least valuable football cards ever made). But it turns out he wasn't that bad, at least according to the numbers; he threw for more than 13,000 career yards and once torched the Vikings for five touchdowns in a single game. Of course, Danielson now covers SEC football for CBS, so I suppose I should only be considering his career at Purdue...where he ran the wishbone and threw for only 2,748 yards over three seasons. In the booth, I appreciate his pragmatism and his clarity of thought, even though he doesn't believe in the importance (or even in the existence) of momentum. Maybe they didn't have that at Purdue. Better as a broadcaster.

    Steve Kerr: During his collegiate career at Arizona, Kerr overcame a major knee injury and the murder of his father by an Islamic death squad (!). He averaged only six points a game over the span of his 17-year NBA career, but he played on four straight championship teams and had a jumper so pure it was almost Beatlesesque. He's now the cleverest, most lucid pro-hoops commentator in America. This fellow has lived a charmed life (except, I suppose, for the knee injury and that Islamic-death-squad situation). Better as a broadcaster.

    John McEnroe: At the apex of his supremacy, J-Mac was arguably the most brilliant tennis technician who ever lived. But the operative word here is arguably; you could just as easily contend that he wasn't even the best player of his own generation and that his dominance was over by the time he turned 27. However, there is no argument whatsoever over who's the best tennis commentator in TV history. The hyperacerbic McEnroe is 27 times more compelling than Mary Carillo???and she's probably number two on the list. Better as a broadcaster.

    Joe Theismann: As field general for the Skins' magic years, Joe threw for 25,206 yards. This total is roughly equivalent to the number of compliments he's given to Brett Favre since 2001. Struggling to find chemistry alongside pedantic goofball Tony Kornheiser, Theismann is an overbearing apologist with a proclivity for obsessing on aspects of strategy that no one seems to recognize but him. He was far better at handing the pig to John Riggins and having his tibia snapped by a cokehead. Better as a player.

    Kirk Herbstreit: A one-year starter at QB for Ohio State, Herbstreit's defining game was a 13-13 tie against Michigan in 1992. Over time, he has become an increasingly authoritative, stridently sane on-air personality. Better as a broadcaster.

    Billy Packer and Dick Vitale: As a point guard, Packer led Wake Forest to the Final Four when JFK was still alive; his nemesis Vitale is blind in one eye, but (at least according to his autobiography, Vitale) "Richie could always shoot the rock." This is unclear information to compute. Neither is as good as Bill Raftery, even when he's drowsy.

    Sean Salisbury: If you discount the print-media buffoons (Jay Mariotti, Skip Bayless, et al) who go on TV with the express intent of destroying whatever credibility the newspaper industry once had, Salisbury is the least cogent, most wrongheaded voice in the sports media. He's an atrocity. Yet this broadcast lunacy has saved his gridiron legacy. Salisbury's career-passer rating was a dismal 55.1 and he never had one decent season, but in retrospect that production looks amazing. It seems impossible, but it's true: Sean Salisbury was better as a player. Which is just about the craziest sentence I've ever written.
  • JimBeamJimBeam Seattle. 2,012 Posts

    He got paid to write that. And I'm in a damn cubicle looking at spreadsheets.

    let's take it to the microsoft excel spreadsheet olympics.
    son, you ain't ready for my shift-tab action.




    pasue.
    f'real dough. speak not on what you know not.
    My grasp of excel macros will son your shift-tabbys all day, dunny.
    likeamuhfucka.
    yes, i've been drinking.
    hi cas. when you gonna come back down and throw on some bobby brown records at the monthly with me and the hippoh? he wants to be called xippo now. i know not.
    hollur on the pm old man, i will teach thee the ways of the excelness.
    crystal?
  • theory9theory9 1,128 Posts
    on that article, kitchenknight.
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