He opted for a beardless Klosterman because "beards are difficult in this medium — too inky." So let that genius insight ooze into your lobes, budding napkin artistes.

Enough.

*****

Hopefully, Jay Mariotti's Underground photo will surface this weekend. Tomorrow, I'll be taking the first part of the morning and Grass Against Greenies has the afternoon. Sunday, Barry Poopchesky rides the snake.

Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin. SKEETS! out.

Now it's been reworked with the more Disney-friendly f——ing's. Oh, to be inside the offices when ESPN.com editor Rob King realized this version made it up for so long. Somehow this is still Jemele Hill's fault.

UPDATE: ESPN's official comment:

"We received the original work from the publisher and mistakenly published it without editing out the inappropriate language. We caught this error quickly and made the edits, all within 30 minutes of publishing. We apologize for the mistake."

So, 30 minutes.

Klosterman: "Downtown Owl" Excerpt [ESPN.com]

As I have grown older, it's become clear that the Lakers-Celtics rivalry represents absolutely everything: race, religion, politics, mathematics, the reason I'm still not married, the Challenger explosion, Man vs. Beast, and everything else. There is no relationship that isn't a Lakers-Celtics relationship.

Anyway, The Blowtorch smartly checked in with Klosterman in the wake dawn of Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight for this thoughts. One gets the sense that this new rivalry has less propensity to shake our earth to its very foundations.

QUESTION #5 - "Where should I get my news?"
Celtic People get their news from the New York Times web page, the print edition of the Cincinnati Inquirer, Grit magazine, anecdotal conversations with drug dealers, The Bill Simmons podcast, John Stossel, the subtext of Cormac McCarthy novels, and their own dreams. Laker People get their news from episodes of 24, The Huffington Post, billboards, the users guide for GTA4, unicorn-themed Tarot cards, Diablo Cody's tumblr account, Chinese menus, and Andrew W.K.

We support any fanbase that gets its news from Andrew W.K. Go Lakers!

33 Redux [The Blowtorch]

But the Wizznutzz crew has a serious challenge today from Chuck Klosterman, who digs deep into the Arenas ethos in an upcoming edition of The New York Times' sports magazine PLAY. (Full disclosure: We have a story in the next issue of PLAY as well, but it's not nearly as good as Klosterman's.) The general (and simplified) thesis of Klosterman on Arenas: His weirdness is not necessarily a construction but a pure and honest expression of a unique and consistently calculating soul. The money quote:

"Sometimes you have to create your own legacy, and that is what I have done. There is no quirkiness about me. I just lash out at things, but it's lighthearted. The freak part of me is not that I'm going to take 60 pills to get attention. I'm not that kind of freak. I just like to watch the Gummi Bears on TV. I'm not Ron Artest. I'm a character. The things I do, the things I say — these are things I sit in my house and think about. I know what I'm doing."

When you get past the "Arenas watches the Gummi Bears!" soundbite lunacy, Klosterman does an outstanding job of pointing out why Arenas' weirdness is less interesting in of itself, and more fascinating because it's so open and admitted. And why, seriously, it's damned near impossible not to root for Gilbert Arenas.

Vote For Gilbert [PLAY Magazine]
ENORMOUS AGENT ZERO INCITE 2 [Wizznutzz]

(UPDATE: Wait ... The Gummi Bears have a show?)

But the windmill tilters at No Mas have all kinds of issues with the whole premise, and they bring up some points worthy of consideration, if you're the considerate type.

And that, I guess, is what really bothers me about this whole thing - Ali as brand name, Ali as leftist icon, Ali as Righteous Black Man We Can All Agree On. Ali as the white man's black man. It makes me sick. All you have to do is watch that one episode of Wide World of Sports where Cosell and Ali watch the Ernie Terrell fight together and Cosell is basically insisting that Ali apologize, ostensibly for "acting out" in the ring, for the whole "what's my name?" incident, but really just for being an uppity black motherfucker who doesn't know his place, Cosell who we now laud as having been one of the few media supporters of Ali... check that out and tell me that the ESPN co-equivalent of the 60's didn't hate Ali's black ass and wish him no good.

We think this is particularly true: If there were an Ali equivalent today, we guarantee you the Joe Bucks of the planet would be decrying his antics left and right. Hell: Maybe there already is an Ali equivalent, and none of us will realize it for 30 years. As long as it's not Terrell Owens. That's all we ask.

Ali Crap [No Mas]
Ali Rap [ESPN]

Thank goodness, then, for Juiced Or Not? (link via Baseball Musings). The premise of the site: We shall know who is/was on steroids not by drug tests, or court transcripts, or anything else but simply: We think he/she did it. Therefore, he/she did. It's not scientific, it's not fair, but it sure is definitive, and at this point, we're so exhausted that that will work just fine with us.

So we encourage you all to head to the site to vote, and submit your own nominees. Because all this moral ambivalence is killing us: We just want to know whom to boo.

Juiced Or Not? (via Baseball Musings)
The Breaking Point [ESPN]
Let Juice Loose [New York Magazine]

Sometime tonight, our intrepid A.J. Daulerio will land in the greater Detroit area; expect the first of countless missives (OK, fine: You'll probably be able to actually count them) to arrive tomorrow. He might even have himself a little video action. Plus, we have a sneaking suspicion he's going to give Jimmy Kimmel a wedgie.

To keep yourself entertained until then, we suggest OutSports' Gay Guide To The Super Bowl (complete with extensive glossary of Homoerotic Football Terms), you can check out the city of Detroit desperately doing some last-minute tidying up or you can read Chuck Klosterman's blog at Page 2. (You can tell it's an ESPN "blog" because, well, there are no links. Whoever heard of links from a blog?)

Anyway, let the madness begin.

Downtown Detroit All Spruced Up [Ray Wert]
Super Bowl XL For The Clueless [OutSports]
Introducing The Best Blog Ever [ESPN Page 2]

To recap: In his Page 2 column last month — a good column, though we still love the most recent one, particularly the line about Kobe Bryant and the Lakers being like an eighth grade team and Kobe being the kid with a mustache — Klosterman (gently) took Kornheiser to task for an inconsistent (and inexplicable) view on the NBA's dress code. A blogger (because they're always the ones causing all the trouble) sent the Kornheiser show an email about the column, and, because it's really hard to fill hours of airtime, Kornheiser went ballistic on the air, demanding Klosterman call into the show and defend himself.

Now Kornheiser is in day three of his on-air rants, calling ESPN.com for comment and continuing to stomp his radio wave feet. No word from Klosterman yet, though we'd have to think the guy's too busy to listen to sports talk radio all day. It's funny, too, because we'd have to think Kornheiser and Klosterman would be kindred spirits, separated by a couple of decades. If "Saved By The Bell" had been on in 1978, we're sure Kornheiser would have been all over it. We doubt he would have like Dokken much, though.

Oops, What Have I Done? [To The People]
Just Keep My Sports The Same [Page 2]

It was a rollicking evening, to say the least, full of endless lines, weird people dressed in Incredible Hulk outfits and, inevitably, Pop Culture Guru Chuck Klosterman, who showed up at the end of the night to nuzzle and discuss the impotence of blogs. Come with us, after the jump, to the first ever edition of the Deadspin Party Crash.

Whatever your thoughts on Simmons, one thing was clear from Tuesday's night's festivities: On the East Coast, anyway, this book is going to be huge. We arrived at 5:45, 45 minutes before the signing was supposed to start, and the line was already wrapped around the bar (which was entirely unequipped to handle that many people, by the way). We stood in line for nearly an hour, and we were the lucky ones; we estimated nearly 600 people there (and that's probably conservative), and Simmons, to his credit, stayed and signed for nearly three hours. By the end of the night, he was beginning to resemble Don Zimmer.

The story must start with a line, however.

This is early in the night, when the khaki-ed masses still were harboring illusions that they'd end up sitting and having beers and arguing about Dale Sveum with Bill all night. This is the highest number of straight men ever seen in one place in NYC's West Village, by the way.

After waiting for our hour-and-a-half, we approached Bill's table. We stopped to bust this dude who was trying to steal from the tithing tray, though. We're good citizens like that.

Success! We handed our book — stolen — to Bill and introduced ourselves as Deadspin, at which time he leapt out a window and started streaking naked down Varick Street, screaming about the second coming. Best part about that? "The OC" isn't even on until Thursday.

After this photo was taken, Deadspin editor Will Leitch ran out on his wedding, inspiring a nationwide search. "I was running away from myself," says Leitch.

At this point, the line stayed still for about an hour.

Well, crap, now we're going to have to go back to writing about A-Rod being a swinger.

Well, now our book was signed, we'd all traded heterosexual man hugs and ass grabs, and we were all done. What more could happen at this point? Just a long line of people who, tragically, looked like chubby Jimmy Fallons waiting to get their books signed. And then the real fun began: Bill's Bosom Buddy Chuck Klosterman showed up!

He seemed bewildered by the infinite line and went forth to try to find Bill.

This is Klosterman trying to get past the velvet rope of ESPN Books executive editor Michael Solomon. "No, you don't understand ... we discussed Can't Buy Me Love just yesterday."

Finally Chuck made it in and sat next to Bill as he signed book after book after book. The woman next to him is not The Sports Gal; we asked. She looked kind of horrified when we asked, actually.

We started to feel kind of bad for Chuck, sitting there all by himself, author of three books, with none of his own to sign. So we ran down the street to Barnes and Noble and bought one. Least we could do.

And God bless him, he signed it. He wrote "This Is Charity!" in our book, which was either a rip or a line from a Dokken song that we didn't remember.

(Update: We've been informed that we weren't the first people to have Klosterman sign their book; two people before us actually happened to have copies of Klosterman books WITH THEM as they went through the line. We find this both amazing and terrifying.)

The night started getting a little hazy. Apparently this guy dressed up like a doctor — and his buddy dressed up as The Incredible Hulk — so Bill would take a picture of them and put it on his site, or something similarly nonsensical. But ESPN had sold out all their books and weren't letting anyone in to talk to Bill unless they had a book. So he asked for ours. And we said yes, because, well, as we said, things were getting a little hazy at this point.

By now, Bill had signed so many books for so many hours, he probably still thinks he was hallucinating. But hey, weird dressed-up-as-doctor-guy, you made our site anyway. That's something.

And then all the books were gone, and it was time to rope off the Simmons/Klosterman/Solomon/Not-Sports-Gal quartet. Fortunately, there was an extremely important, extremely close Red Sox game playing in the bar, so Bill — the Boston Sports Guy — could get back to the business of rooting on the Sox.

Or discussing The Karate Kid, whatever.

And then we all went home and watched "Justice League." Thanks, Bill! Good times!

Anyway, since it's these two guys — and it's going on all week — the pop-culture references come fast, furious and relentless. Let's play a little game: Guess which "Saved By The Bell"-addled thirtysomething columnist made which reference. (And no fair saying "both." Though that's an excellent guess.)

• 1. Fleetwood Mac
• 2. Can't Buy Me Love
• 3. "The View"
• 4. Weezer's "Pinkerton" album
• 5. Tony Montana
• 6. Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach
• 7. "Survivor"
• 8. Philip K. Dick
• 9. American Psycho

Oh, and Bill mispelled Nirvana's "In Utero" album, which is the only time we've ever truly been angry with him. And he uses the phrase "snorting lines," which cracked us up.

Curious Guy: Chuck Klosterman [Sports Guy's World]

(Answers after the jump)

• 1. Klosterman
• 2. Simmons
• 3. Simmons
• 4. Klosterman
• 5. Simmons
• 6. Simmons
• 7. Simmons
• 8. Klosterman
• 9. Klosterman