How to Maintain Your Title as a Past-Your-Prime, Trite, Self-Engrandizing Asshole "Journalist". By: Rick Reilly

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com (P)Rick Reilly


Dear Little People Whom I Talk Down To, But Whose Patronage I Rely Upon, Ironically,


I guess you know by now, I'm an asshole. Since I've always sucked as a writer, I was always swept under the journalist rug and relegated to the puff pieces that were 500 words or less (or crap like the video that appears below). I was jealous of journalists who had something to say and were actually intelligent, news-breaking wordsmiths. My self-defense mechanism for being relegated to puff-pieces was to try and convince people that the work I did was the cool, hip, work and I was the standard-bearer of awesomeness. I told the real writers that everyone else was merely a practitioner of "your great-grandaddy's journalism" I was to cool to stoop to that level. But obviously I wanted to be them. It's like how when the youngest kid in a family of three half-heartedly shouts on the way to their parents car, "I call the middle seat in the back!".
It's also true that I wasn't making as much money being a puff-piece-producer, so I cranked out some lame-ass golf books to remedy that, that way I could drive a Benz like the big-boy journalists. Why golf? Because golfer's wives have disposable income and will buy my book for their husbands because it says the word "golf" on the cover! Did any of my books matter to anyone? Of course not. But do I care? Hell no, I got paid. I drive a Benz!!!

You know the hot chick in your high school class that was always a total bitch to everyone, and never gave any good guys the time of day because they weren't on the football team? Then 10 years later she wouldn't give good guys the time of day because he wasn't pulling down 100k a year? But then after her second kid out of wedlock, she realized that guys who did make that much money didn't date girls like her anyway? Then at age 35 she realized that she's not even hot enough to rely on her old shtick of being hot, then she's hit with the reality that her life has just passed her by so she just becomes a bitter, old crusty bitch, at an early age?

I'm that bitch.

Back when I was hip and off-beat, I was like the bloggers of today- a little different, a fresh voice not doing what everyone else was doing. Only now I'm not quite as cool, hip or necessary. As a young journalist writer, I told established writers they were lame. I told anyone who'd listen that I was hip and doing something different, even if my work was the literary equivalent of a Big Mac. While real journalists were busy unearthing poignant stories and actually making news, I was two-steps behind commenting on those stories in snarky 500 piece essays. I wasn't George Will. I was Perez Hilton. But now I'm the high school bitch whose looks left her world when her third kid out of wedlock entered it. I'm not even today's Perez Hilton anymore. I'm Perez Hilton at age 60. Sure I'm bitter about it. You would be too if decades of shallowness just hit you in the face.

Since I have no journalistic credibility, and I can no longer play the "Trust me I'm cooler, just get out of my way" card, I decided to talk down to the younger, newer generation that Darwinism dictates will replace me. I'll glibly say out of the side of my mouth that if they were real writers, they'd write for actual publications, like I have. Then I'd tell them how I was the Bob Dylan of my era, knowing full well that I was more like Phil Collins. So when the young bloggers ask "Who the hell is Phil Collins?" I say "Exactly! if you're not old or hip enough to know who Phil Collins is, how can you be more hip than me??!" I'm just witty like that. But what's awesome is when the bloggers come back with "Hey even Sir-Mix-A-Lot understands that people nowadays would rather listen to Lil Wayne than him." I say, "For shizzle." To prove that I am still relevant and hip(!!!).

So I'm still not a journalist, and I'm definitely not the coolest kid on the block anymore. So how do I make a living? I do utter crap like this:



How sweet was that video, Dog (or is it Dogg?)?? I did my own YouTube video (but on text messages they we say "u2ube")! Not only that, but I re-re-re-re-re-re-re-hashed how the Cubs haven't had much success in the post season!! How tight is that, Broseph? Did you see what I did there? I took a team that hasn't won a championship in 100 years, as all of America knows, and I somehow managed to articulate that it appears they haven't been lucky!! Dude, Grantland Rice- WHAT?? Bill Nack, Peter Gammons, and Will McDonough- You can hate me now (to quote brothers Nas and Puff Daddy)! Never mind that I mispronounced Kosuke Fukudome's firstname (allegedly it's pronounced "Kose K" and not "Ko-Soo-K". whateva4eva!) I did that vid in a t-shirt!! On the YouTube!


G(eezer)s Up Bloggers Down,


Rick Reilly, IDriveABenzAndBloggerzDont@aol.com