Book tours are debilitating. My body clock is so screwed up that, on consecutive nights, I woke up in the middle of the night and had no idea where I was. My right thumb has swelled to 140 percent the size of my left thumb. My back is crumbling like blue cheese. My immune system might turn me into Patient X of Swine Flu 2.0 before everything's said and done. Even my BlackBerry mouse no longer can move to the right.
The good news: All of these things are fixable. (Well, except for my right thumb. Can't feel anything. Might have to chop if off Ronnie Lott-style.) What can't be fixed is my formerly hot NFL picks season. Sayonara, My Best Record Ever. It's gone. Out the window. And all because my book tour prevented me from properly following football. Or, because I suck at picking games and was destined to go cold. It's one or the other.
Because I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy, I have decided to blame the tour for my picking woes. In 11 days, I went from Washington to Philly to Bristol to Manhattan to Boston to Los Angeles to Chicago to Phoenix to San Francisco to San Diego. I would do it again. See, the worst thing about being a writer is that you can't see the people who are reading you. They are just nameless, faceless people with e-mail addresses. Book signings put a face on these people. That's why I like them. I also happen to have an exceedingly nice and appreciative group of readers. Which makes it so much fun to go visit them.
Of course, when you bang out 11 signings in 11 days, memories invariably jumble together and stop belonging to a sequence. They become & jumbled. Like one of those smoothies that have 11 different fruits in them. I can't even tell the fruits apart anymore. So here are the jumbled memories of my book tour. I could not present them any other way. It's all one big unrecognizable smoothie.
For instance...
10/27: Number 39In this excerpt from the Sports Guy's "Book of Basketball," Bill reveals why Patrick Ewing -- the player who spawned the infamous Ewing Theory -- ranks as the 39th best player ever. |
Inside 710 ESPN - Los Angeles
Part I: Gasol's return, Lamar Odom coming off the bench, Luke Walton's absence, and dancing with Ren McCormick! Part II: Lakers, 81 and The Fab Five with Jalen Rose; plus, Brandon Jennings, Golden State's implosion and Derrick Rose's hair.
710 ESPN's next Lunch with a Legend takes place Tuesday, November 24th at Morton's the Steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles and features iconic filmmaker Spike Lee.
Connect with 710 ESPN and 710espn.com by utilizing the power of Twitter. Get the scoop on what's going down and coming up on 710 ESPN.
On the injury front, Damian Williams is no longer wearing a boot, but is still limping slightly and did not practice.