It's A Good Time To Be Bill Simmons

All kinds of news involving Our Boy Bill Simmons, kicked off with a glowing pop culture icon validation from Slate's Bryan Curtis, who writes the "Middlebrow" column for the Web mag, which has featured luminaries like Michael Flatley, Demi Moore and Cirque du Soleil in the past. Curtis has big nice fat words for Simmons.

Simmons has become sports' moral arbiter. He speaks with the authority of a particularly thoughtful bartender. ... It is quite possible that "sports," broadly defined, is thriving even while its major institutions are in decline. The genius of the "Sports Guy" is that he knows where the action is.

High praise indeed. In other Simmons news, there's some fun B-side material from his interview with Boston Sports Media. The book signings (which wrapped up their first leg last evening in Chicago) have been continually packed — even causing some bloggers to grouse about books selling out while forcing Simmons to post uncomfortably for pictures — and the book is said to have cracked the NY Times' Top 10 Hardcover Nonfiction list. You know what this means, of course: "He's a sellout!"

Bill Simmons: Bard Of The Red Sox [Slate] SG Forum [Sons Of The Sports Guy] SG Interview Revisited [Boston Sports Media]