Grantland: 2 Weeks of a Noble Endeavor

On June 8th, Bill Simmons launched his latest ESPN endeavor: Grantland, a sports and pop culture site. "Wow!", you say sarcastically, "isn't that exactly what Page 2 is?"

Yes, yes it is.

But Grantland is more than Page 2, for a few reasons:

• It is focused on long content, not just short attention grabbing blog posts
• It has attracted a really solid set of known writers (Simmons, Chuck Klosterman, Dave Eggers) and lesser-known writers (Bill Barnwell, Katie Baker)
• It's not plastered in ESPN's incessant branding and cross-promotion

At the core, Grantland seems to be an attempt to prove that if you generate good, sustainable content (even if it might be magazine article length) that the audience will come. And that makes Grantland a noble endeavor.

So, after two weeks, how does Grantland look? Let's start with the bad.

As a web property, its design is, well, I don't want to say excruiatingly bad, but it's pretty bad. The layout with new content appearing at the top is reasonably blog like, but without any of the markers that give you a clue about what's new since you last visited (or even just what's new today). The intermingled blog content (where sometimes it seems blog posts make the front page, but other times they don't) adds a bit of confusion.

Those are reasonably minor quibbles.

The site itself looks like it was designed in 1997. That's ok, I think, since they're going for the old-timey media feel (or at least I think they are). Except it ends up looking pretty ass-like when you end up with a giant Subway or Klondike ad in the middle of a page.

The use of footnotes (which is a Simmons favorite) is fine. The footnotes showing up in the right column, in line with the reference is a clever idea that sounds better than it works, especially if you use a service like Instapaper or ReadItLater (perfect for the longer content of Grantland). Footnotes are called footnotes for a reason -- the bottom of the page is *always* the bottom of the page.

Oh, and no full text RSS feeds. Seriously, it's 2011.

However, the the poor-to-middling site design can be completely overlooked if the content is as stellar as I think the team at Grantland wants it to be.

So far, sadly, the answer to that is that it is not uniformly great. But there have been some bright spots. Some truly, supremely, worth the experiment already bright spots.

Tom Bissel's incredibly thoughtful, "review as commentary on society" review of the video game L.A. Noire was the first article on the Grantland site that really met the high bar the Simmons' team is aspiring too. There are almost no mainstream outlets that would devote 5000 words to a review of a video game, unless it ended with the conclusion that they cause all of society's ills.

Charles Pierce's recollection of his time at The National is just the sort of well-written piece that doesn't really get written any more, or if it does, it's on some backwater blog that you hope you catch a link to on a Twitter. And it really was the perfect entree into what is probably Grantland's signature piece, to this point, the Tom Shales-ian oral history of The National.

The oral history piece does a few amazing things that I can't imagine flying on ESPN. It allows some ESPN folks to crap on other ESPN (and non-ESPN folk). It spends thousands of words reliving the days of a long departed sports daily. It makes it interesting.

If Grantland can launch one or two of these pieces a quarter (and, it's somewhat telling all 3 of these hit in the first couple of days), then it may not just be a vanity outlet for Bill Simmons, but instead a place where long-form content can go and actually be read.

If Grantland has more of the, let's say, spotty content that has filled its "pages" since the launch, I think it'll end up as just another Page 2. I'm hoping that the Chris-Jones-and-Wesley-Morris-like articles (two authors who I have enjoyed elsewhere), where we take a simple sports topic and try to turn them into something more poetic (or simply, purely, less readable), find their way to an editor who can reign them in.

Ironically, that editor may be Bill Simmons, and that hasn't proven to be one of his strong points.

I'm actually hopeful that each month Grantland will spit out a couple of "I'll read that once a year" articles mixed in with a few "did ya read that one yet" articles you share with your friends. Mix in a slightly better site design and I think it'll be a success.

By success, here, I mean something I'll go to and know that I'll be able to grab a good article or two to read on a plane or subway ride (or more likely, on the shitter). I'm not sure, beyond the Bill Simmons articles (which have lost some of their sheen when put next to better writers) that there's an audience for the site, but I'm really hoping I'm wrong. (I'd love to see what their webstats look like.)

There should be a place in this world for a site like Grantland.

Christmas Comes Early

Hands-On: With Wii U’s Touchscreen Controller, Nintendo Could Radically Change Games | GameLife | Wired.com: "As Link duked it out with a giant hairy spider on the TV screen, we could see all sorts of secondary info on the controller screen: the dungeon map, Link’s health bar, the items he was carrying. These icons no longer cluttered up the TV screen and got in the way of the high-definition visuals. The cool part was this: With one tap of an icon on the touchscreen, the images flipped. Suddenly, seamlessly, the game was running on the touchscreen and the map, etc., was on the television."

Aahhh. So awesome.

Notification Center: "You get all kinds of notifications on your iOS device: new email, texts, friend requests, and more. With Notification Center, you can keep track of them all in one convenient location. Just swipe down from the top of any screen to enter Notification Center. Choose which notifications you want to see. Even see a stock ticker and the current weather. New notifications appear briefly at the top of your screen, without interrupting what you’re doing. And the Lock screen displays notifications so you can act on them with just a swipe. Notification Center is the best way to stay on top of your life’s breaking news."

Ahhhhh. Awesomesauce.

iTunes Match:"Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality."

Knockout.

Apple and Nintendo should just marry each other. They would have kids as cute as baby pandas, but who hit baseballs like Albert Pujols, and dominate basketball like LeBron James.

Weezer Covers Radiohead's "Paranoid Android"

I love the fact that Weezer has, probably more than almost any band out there, completely embraced what it means to be a band in 2011. Because every once in a while it leads to something incredibly cool.

Like a perfect cover of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android".

(Originally found this via Pitchfork.)

Super Excited Birthday Kid

My new favorite picture. And the title of this post is the google search that lead me to this bit of awesomeness.

And it's better animated.

Testing Out Quick Photo From The Phone

Conjecture, Magic, and A Fools Hope →

Minimal Mac | iCloud – Conjecture, Magic, and A Fools Hope:

• But what about the stuff I bought from Amazon? Ripped from CD?’ Buy it from Amazon? Rip it from CD? No matter. If iTunes sells it you can stream it.
• ‘But most of what I listen to is not on the iTunes store!’ Then, this service is not for you.

I really, really, really hope that this is how the much-prophesied Apple Streaming Music Locker Magic Box of Bits works. I doubt it will work this way (I have my doubts the music industry would go along with it), but if it did work this way, and all I had to do was upload a list of the music I wanted in my Magic iTunes Music Locker, and it was immediately available, well, that'd be enough for me.

(Via Minimal Mac.)

The Amazing Serendipity of the Interwebs

I think, by far, my favorite thing about the interwebs is the ability to randomly stumble across an incredible story you didn't even know you were interested in. Today, while just doing my normal web reading—hitting a handful of pages, RSS feeds, Twitter, etc.—I stumble across someone mentioning the John 3:16 guy.

You know, this guy:

He's the guy who any sports-loving kid who grew up in the early 80s knows as the random rainbow wig dude who showed up every major sporting event and managed to get on TV. I'm guessing, like me, pretty much everyone assumed he was a well-intentioned goofball, just trying to get on TV.

I think we all just assumed he was a precursor to the modern day Jumbotron morons who get wear stupid outfits, do stupid dances, or hold up stupid signs, all in the name of getting on the in-arena Jumbotron (not even getting on real TV).

Except, turns out, he was a grade-A certifiable nutjob. And that's the amazingness of the interwebs. You can start your day reading about technology, sports, the weather, whatever, and end up seeing the John 3:16 guy, finding him on Wikipedia, reading some of the articles about him, and then adding the documentary about him to your Netflix queue. Learning about how he went from wearing a rainbow wig to attempting to buy a gun to shoot then candidate Bill Clinton.

So yeah, he's not just a cuddly crazy guy, he's a legit crazy guy. It's worth the read. A guy who, in a different era, would have been likely exiled to the dustbin of history, only remembered in microfiche, has his story told in a documentary, written into Wikipedia, and available to everyone at the end of a hyperlink or search query.

Ah, the interwebs.

You Can’t Replace Email if You Require Email — The Brooks Review →

"You can’t replace pants with shorts when your definition of shorts is: everyone buy pants and cut the legs off — pants will still be a viable business (the consumer is just altering the usage). Same too with Twitter, Facebook, et al, they are still relying on email for certain parts of their service (like adding new users or sending notifications) while wanting to replace email at the same time."

I hadn't really thought about the ubiquitousness of email from this angle before. Even the services that are trying to replace email as the primary communications channel require you to have an email address. Obviously, this is because a) today email is the way they are used to getting their communication of passwords, logins, etc., and b) you have to have a way to communicate to people before they start using your service.

But, it would be pretty ballsy for some new service to require either email or a phone number (or <insert your method of identity here>).

(via The Brooks Review)

It’s about striving to be better than everybody else.

I said you need to strive to be better than everyone else. I didn’t say you needed to be better than everyone else. But you gotta try. That’s what character is. It’s in the trying.
Coach Eric Taylor

The most recent episode of Friday Night Lights had a great scene between Coach Eric Taylor and his quarterback, Vince Howard. (I've embedded the clip below for you to see for yourself.) In it, Coach explains to Vince about what character is. It's not necessarily about being better than everyone else. It's about trying to be better than everyone else.

And, that, in a nutshell summarizes my complete and utter disappointment with the American people.

The news of Osama bin Laden's death on Sunday night was an amazing moment in American history (and possibly in world history). Here was this man who—without any doubt—is one of most evil people to have set foot on earth. He was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, and thousands more people around the world. He was a scourge on the Earth and I am glad he is dead.

His death was cathartic. It was closure for the wounds that were opened ten years ago.

And, for just a moment, it looked like we, as an American people, might be able to move on from this chapter in our history. President Obama's address that night was measured, and of the right tenor. It did not glorify this death. It was perfunctory. He was a danger to the US, he was a mass murderer, and we did what we needed to do.

Character. President Obama seems to have it.

The rest of the American people? The American media? Not so much.

The vision that we, as Americans, shared with the world upon this momentous occasion should have been one of relief, maybe satisfaction that a mass murderer had been brought to justice. And then we should have reflected on the events of ten years ago, and attempted to exude the same quiet dignity that the President exemplified.

It’s about the character. It’s about striving to be better than everybody else.

Instead, what did we see? A bunch of drunken, spoiled, asshole college students celebrating like their team had made the Final Four. It wasn't about the moment: it was about being on TV. Maybe being the person to get interviewed on CNN. An excuse to get drunk in the middle of finals.

America, it seems, is full of douchebags.

Why were they celebrating?

Are we safer as a country? Marginally, maybe. But not in a meaningful way.

Were they dramatically impacted by 9/11? Possibly, but probably not any more so than the rest of us (and since most of them were probably in middle school, many probably less so).

Was it an outburst of good old fashioned patriotism? Maybe.

Most likely, they're just enormous fucking douchebags who thought it was cool to go get on TV, throw huge riotous parties, and make the rest of us look bad.

You might be asking, why do you care? Well, I only care inasmuch that I think this reflects horrendously on all of us, as Americans. We claim moral superiority. As a country, we lost our shit when we saw the video of unnamed Middle Eastern citizens celebrating 9/11 or Mogadishu (even if the footage was out-of-context). How dare they celebrate the deaths of Americans like that?

America, it seems, is full of douchebags and hypocrites.

I'll reiterate: I am glad we killed Osama bin Laden.

But, as Americans, we should strive to be better. We should strive to be the world leader that we are. We can be happy that bin Laden was killed, but we shouldn't rejoice in it. It does not "fix" terrorism. It very likely makes us, in the short-term, less secure. It is a cathartic and fitting end to a murderer.

But we should not relish or celebrate a death. As Coach Taylor eloquently pointed out, we should have character. We should strive to be better than everybody else. We don't have to be better, but we have to try.

And, sadly, it just doesn't feel like people care to try.

BOOM-SHAK-A-LACKA (NBA Jam on the iPhone)

On Friday, a bunch of sites mentioned that EA was having an Easter weekend iTunes Store. An assortment of EA games were at reasonable prices (then again, a bunch of EA's games are shite, and they should pay me to play them).

But, 99 cents for NBA Jam?

It didn't really matter how bad it might have been, because that's a price I couldn't possibly pass up.

And, oh, how it is awesome.

To be fair, let's start with the bad.

• As with almost any iOS action game, the controls are an on-screen joystick and buttons. It doesn't matter how well they're implemented, it's still a shitty control scheme and probably the weakest part of iOS as a gaming platform.
• If you're not wearing headphones, your hand is going to cover the speakers and you won't hear the sound.

That's pretty much it.

What's awesome? Everything. The rosters are pretty up-to-date and full of awesome unlockable and hidden players (Bird and McHale, Spud Webb and 'Nique, Stockton and Malone). The gameplay is simple enough that the touchscreen controls, as cumbersome as they might be, work well enough. The graphics are fun and solid. The sound is good, and has brought back the announcer (or at least a sound-alike) from old-school NBA Jam.

Basically, it's the same old NBA Jam with prettier graphics, modern players, and it's on a device that fits in your pocket.

Oh yeah, and it's 99 cents.

If you enjoyed NBA Jam at all when it was in the arcades or on the home systems in the 90s, you'll like it now. There's a difficulty that works for everyone, you can pause a game at any point and pick it back up again. There's a campaign mode that let's you work through all the teams, unlocking players and special attributes as you go.

NBA Jam for the iPhone will be your favorite time killer for at least a couple of weeks.

Go buy it. Now.

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