Punking Paul Shirley
| 9
|
by user I am a cpcp
There are a few people in the world of sports journalism I just can't stand.
1) Woody Paige
2) I want to say Kenny Smith, but I'm not sure if that's right. All I know that that he's obnoxious, he's never right about anything and I think he's on TBS/TNT. I don't think it's Stephen A. Smith... I think it's one of those two though.
3) Bill Simmons
4) Paul Shirley
The first two are on my list because I find them annoying and I usually disagree with everything they say. The second two are on my list because I don't think they have any place writing for ESPN. I don't see what they bring to the site or the magazine at all.
I realize Bill Simmons is their poster boy for the ESPN NY/Boston bias, but that's a whole other subject.
Anyway, if you don't know who Paul Shirley is, he was in the NBA as a 12th man for like a year with the Suns and somehow got a job writing for ESPN out of it. He keeps a blog and does chats. They usually are all about him and what girls he thinks are hot and nothing about sports and are a giant waste of everyone's time. I happened to see he was doing a chat this afternoon, and since I was bored working I decided to mess with him a little bit.
First I created my character, Jimmy was the first named that popped into my head and I decided Jimmy was from Pittsburgh because I don't like Pittsburgh and I was going to be playing a oblivious jerk, and I thought Pittsburgh is an obvious place for Jimmy to come from.
After creating Jimmy, I would switch my window over to the chat every now and then and submit a question about a Pauly Shore movie. (Because their names are similar, get it?)
Which movie do you regret making more? Jury Duty or Son-in-Law?
Did you do your own stunts for Bio-Dome?
Did you get to use a real gun in "In the Army Now"?
Are you a little jealous that Carla Gugino has been a little more successful than you since Son-in-Law? Are you two still friends?
As you can see from the last question, I called in the help of IMDB. I was a little bummed and somewhat impressed that I hadn't been acknowledged, but still I persisted.
What was is like working with Kylie Minogue in Bio-Dome? Was she at all like her character Dr. Petra von Kant?
Why do you keep ignoring my questions about your movies and talking about sports? I'm not even sure why you're on ESPN.com anyways.
Soon I realized it was getting closely to the end of the chat, so I decided try one last attempt and finally I garnered a response.
Jimmy (Pittsburgh): I didn't see it, was "Paul Shirley is Dead" any good?
PAUL SHIRLEY: And we've derailed.
Not all I hoped for, but hey, at least it gave me a small bit of entertainment for the afternoon.
The chat was mostly full of people either 1) telling him how worthless he was or 2) treating him like a cool, star quarterback older brother that's willing to talk to them.
One person actually said, and I'm partially paraphrasing, "Why can't people just understand that your fans like talking to you because its as close to as we can get to living a celebrity life and it makes us feel better about our lives." Scary stuff if you ask me.
Date
Fri 06/30/06, 2:08 pm EST
