This Is How Hollywood Happens

Last Friday morning, I was dicking around on grantland.com, one of the many websites I like to dick around on when I don’t feel like working. The editor is Bill Simmons, one of my favorite writers for ESPN. You may recall that I once aspired to be featured on one of his mailbags, so far unsuccessfully.

But I got on there today!

Sort of. One of Bill Simmons underlings does this feature every day where he glosses over yesterdays sports news and adds a pretty consistently funny commentary to it. Every Friday he asks readers a question and then on Monday he posts the best answers. Last Friday he asked readers for their best heckling stories and I answered the call.


Here is the link to my response. My answer is at the bottom. Just win, baby.

In case you doubt the authenticity that I was the author, you will notice the paragraph was written in haste and missing key random words, a hallmark Brain Litter trait.

I have to come clean though, the story is not totally true. I spiced it up because I wanted Bill Simmons and America to think I was really cool. I’m only partially really cool.

I did go to San Francisco and I did see the Brewers get swept by the Giants. I snuck a flask of brandy into the game so my memory is slightly fuzzy. I’m positive I yelled out Global Warming is Just a Myth and something about Ronald Reagan. But nobody threw a plastic wine glass at us. People were drinking wine in plastic glasses, I remember thinking how weird that was, but nobody threw one at us.

There, I said it. What you read is the Hollywoodized version of a brewer game I went to four years ago. But I totally get Hollywood now. Most true stories are boring. They need a little zip. It’s like a turkey sandwich. You can add honey mustard to enhance the taste, but it’s still a turkey sandwich in essence, and it’s not hurting anybody. So why not?

Right now, I suspect Bill Simmons and the editorial staff are drawing up some sort of lucrative contract for me to become a freelance writer for them. So long spreadsheets, you’re outta here. I just hope I don’t get James Freyed over the plastic wine glass debacle. That would be a total nightmare.