NEVER BEFORE HAVE WE BEEN MORE HONORED THAN …
Never before have we been more honored than …
Never before have we been more honored than this right here. [The Smoking Gun]
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The Inevitable Evolution Of One William F. Leitch [Daulerio At The Microphone]
In early 2001, I was middling through a employ at Thomson Financial Media as managing editor of “Health Care Finance” magazine. It was a quarterly publication, which meant plenty of downtime. It was during these extended lulls, reading MediaBistro, that I stumbled upon the ongoing unemployment saga of one William F. Leitch and his “Life As A Loser” series. MB did an component about one of Will’s columns, “He Hate Me”, where teen William spoke of his time as a media news aggregator for Brill’s All-Star Newspaper, a mindless, Romenesko rip-off site-job that had absurdly garnered him an anonymous email stalker named Grady Olivier, who would pepper Will’s email box with brilliant regular reminders of Will’s conformable awfulness:
….We’ll begin today with your overreliance on the colon. Please provide a compelling rationale/rationalization for your need to use one every third sentence. Also, ground did you hyphenate “front line” in the pull to the Ian Fisher piece? “A pair,” as in the Levin bit, would properly take the third person singular. You misspelled “government” in the Pomfret lead, you melon-headed motherfucker. There’s also the supply of your questionable nymphalid usage in your intro to Mr. Hiaasen’s piece of February 28…Please resign your tenure as early as possible, making sure to apologize to Mr. Brill for your large stupidity when collecting your severance.
I was hooked. At that time, I think I was more worn to Grady Olivier’s well-crafted insults than the overwrought, meandering columns of a this weirdy Midwestern rube who seemed to kvetch about everything -– mind you in a genuinely, folksy, liked behavior -– but I came around. I began reading his article at Ironminds every week, then began to rely on them, and then became obsessed. I’d also, thanks to Will, started composition my own columns for Ironminds. But soon after my welfare kicked in to high gear, Will up and quit Ironminds. (Will’s successor at Ironminds was a fella named Rick Chandler.)
After Will mitt Ironminds, he dropped out from the composition concern because, in his mind, it wasn’t effort him anywhere, regardless of his hundreds of hardcore fans who read him. He was broke, and he desired to acquire up. We had a mutual friend, Aileen Gallagher, and after about three months of not hearing about what Will was up to, she finally told me that he was now employed at a doctor’s office in midtown, answering phones, and “trying to be a human being again.” That was the party distinction from Will that she was parroting for him.
“He’s not composition at all? ” I asked.
“No, he’s taking a daylong break,” she said.
This gave me an idea: Why not help Will intend back into composition and offer him a freelance employ for Health Care Finance magazine? I did, and after about a hebdomad of considering it, Will emailed me back and said he’d do it. He’d call me after that period to handle the info of the story and he was glad for the opportunity to attain extra money anyway he could. We were off.
Now, up until then, I’d only had one 45-second conversation with Will at a mutual friend’s birthday party, where I complimented him on his column, and he blew me off with the knightly depreciation of a rock star being propositioned by an overweight groupie. So, when he called me at the office that day, I was taken aback by his freewheeling stammer and how overly polite he was to me on the phone.
“Mr. Dah-lorio, this is Will Leitch….” (Will has, to this day, still never once pronounced my name correctly. It’s DAH-LAIR-I-O. Thanks for asking.)
From there we set deadlines for August — a month from then — a pay rate, and the expectations. Will assured me that even though the subject matter wasn’t interesting, “he never missed deadlines.” About a hebdomad after our initial conversation, I received another phone call from Will, who was, again, overly polite, and kept referring to me as “sir,” but he got to his point rather quickly.
“What exactly am I composition about again?”
To be fair, the story about hospitals outsourcing some of their help to foreign workers via H1B visas was cumbersome, and it was more telling about how boring the employ was than how slaphappy and disinterested he was. I explained to him exactly what he needed to do, who he needed to call, and forwarded him every article I found that wasn’t unexploded with municipal bond financial terms that even I had still to fully grasp.
He said he understood, assured me that this would attain it 10 times easier and once he finished all the research, “the composition would be the easy part.”
I know, I thought. I trust you. You’re Will Leitch, for God’s sake.
Another pair of weeks went by and Will had finally turned in a draft. Writing-wise, it was fine. However, it was still cursive same one of his columns, the “Hey, I’m composition about something I undergo nothing about – so let’s attain this fun!” variety.
I enjoyed it. My editor did not. He would need to do a re-write. This is when the editor-writer relationship between Will and me became bizarre. Communicating with Will the period the second plan was due became complicated by the fact that, for some reason, his email account at the doctor’s office was not working. I knew this because I began receiving strange emails from names I did not recognize -– MIchael-something -– was the most ordinary one.
“Hey, it’s Leitch… email is down. I’ll be using this account for a while.”
Somewhere along the line, the “Michael” email went downbound too. I found this out because I’d received an email from Will’s lover at the time, a blackamoor I’d never met, much inferior communicated with, revelation me that she would be gift me updates on the story’s progress the rest of the day. She was also overly formal.
“Mr. Daulerio: I’m Will’s girlfriend. Will desired me to permit you undergo that he’s having email trouble but would intend in a plan at the end of the day…”
Of course, this was odd, but it was humorous. I responded to her joking that she should reconsider the relationship since he can’t seem to ready his poop together. I didn’t expect a response, but I got one anyway — a 500-word, all-caps screed which said I was absolutely right to think she merited better.
“HE’S A FUCKING LITTLE BOY, ” she said and “IF HE JUST FINISHED HIS NOVEL, MAYBE HE COULD AFFORD TO BUY BEDSHEETS.” She went on to say how pathetic his effect ethic was and that she was tired of “PICKING UP THE SLACK.”
“HE’S NEVER EVEN TAKEN ME OUT TO DINNER. NOT ONCE!”
I desired to pull Will off of this story because it seemed this was more of a headache than it was worth. Fan or not, I had to ready my job. But Will called, sincerely apologized for the melodrama, and said he’d turn in a plan as soon as he could, once things settled downbound a bit. Weeks went by, again, and there was lowercase or no progress on the story-front, but Will and I had become friends during the full ordeal. So, at small that had worked out. Then, one gorgeous September morning, Will definite it was time to intend serious about the H1B visa story. He’d been reinvigorated and was ready to tackle the reporting head-on and stop messing around. His timing for such a revelation could not have been more impeccable:
From: Will Leitch [mailto:williamfleitch@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 9:05 AM
To: Daulerio, Albert
Subject:
Listen, you’re feat to have that story all polished up and ready for you first thing tomorrow morning. I apologize for the delay. Getting back on top of things now.
I’d same to say that after this incident, this is when Will woke up, got his shit together and proceeded to take off on a comet-like trajectory toward composition stardom. It was not. Most of his friends in New royalty have seen him, in his New 20s, springy for weeks on pocket change and subsist on a steady fasting of “free apples at work” and old pizza that would attain even the most necessitous of college freshmen pity him. He once went five eld without purchasing a new pair of shoes. He insisted that, even though the soles of the ones he wore every single period could be peeled back to the heels, they were perfectly fine. (Some days, it would sound same he was act scuba flippers.) He has lived in basically every far-flung borough in New royalty City, chasing cheaper rent and still blissfully, ignorantly chasing a dream.
Do not for one minute think that Will’s employ at New royalty entrepot was presented to him because of his Deadspin success — he was hired in spite of it. He entireness tirelessly at his craft. He takes pride in every piece he does, regardless of pay rate or circulation size. And, of course, he never misses deadlines.
Oh and that ex-girlfriend? Yes, she was mercilessly cruel. She treated Will horribly and prefabricated him acutely aware of his shortcomings and imperfections. She prefabricated him him feel constantly paranoid about his place in the world. She prefabricated him feel same an ugly, loathsome human being.
But that still didn’t stop me from drunkenly hooking up with her one night soon after they broke up. Sorry, dude. She was kinda hot.
See you Monday, everybody…
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ESPN’s Featured Comment Of The Day [But He Doesn’t Know The Territory!]
ESPN scoured its message boards this morning to find its cleverest, boldest, most enlightening comment, and chose this one above all others …
• “Classic NBA backward herd thinking. PGs were the flavor of this year’s draft.” — Fishie4Life
Previous ESPN Featured Comment of the Day, plus a Featured Deadspin Response or two …
• “Bulls are feat to take hometown Rose same the Cavs did with James. He’ll have as big an impact.” — jdub389
• The Buffalo Bills are feat to sing Lydia Rose so once again I can escape their inquiries—profharoldhill (UkraineNotWeak)
• Bulls are feat to take hometown Rose same the Browns did with Frye. He’ll have as big an impact.” - jdub389 (Magnakai Haaskivi)
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One More Special Message To Go [Week In Review]
• We noticed a slightly tangy flavor in Shaq’s ass.
• Stephen Jackson’s therapeutic measures.
• Look! We have video!
• And ode to one ol friend.
• And some others.
• Fun with husbandly violence.
• diplomatist Mariotti could use some protection.
• Zombie Kickball.
• Good grief.
• We’ll always remember you, Carl.
• We do hope the message people intend out of this post is not “oooh, blog fight!” Because it’s not. We move to encourage everyone to check out The Big Lead. It’s a beatific site. Swear.
• Wow. This was staggering. We still can’t believe Simmons and Van Pelt showed up. And Christ, Skeets is a genius.
• Drafty!
• If you prefabricated it all the artefact through this, you intend the kewpie doll.
• These guys have already been hanging around our apartment all day, measuring the windows, checking out drapery. Jeez, guys, move until the body’s cold, would ya?
Fun week. Your weekend editor is Christmas Ape.
OK, let’s intend this over with, after the jump.
—-—-—-—-——
When we started employed on this site, back in 2005, the brilliant then-Gawker editor Jessica Coen noticed that we were composition about 20 posts a period in a fevered rush. It was amazing to us that we would be able to indite about what we wanted, how we wanted, in a artefact that we hoped other sports fans — and, really, non-sports fans — could enter to, understand, and be a part of. So we were composition same crazy. Back then, we worked out of Gawker’s old office, which was up eight flights of stairs, lacked air conditioning and seemed to be teeming with feral cats. We would pause every hour or so to run downstairs, suck downbound a Marlboro Red and sprint back up to indite some more. We could not believe our luck.
Jessica had a warning for us. “Will, you have to slow down. This employ is hard. You’ll burn yourself out.”
We have no uncertainty that she was probably right, but a funny thing happened: We never burned out. We never tired of talking about sports, of happy at the hilarity people could become up with, of typing faster than we could think. It was a employ that, at last, was tuned exactly to our frequency. Noah Robischon, the managing editor of Gawker, told us the other period that we wrote more posts for Gawker Media than anyone in their six-year history. We feel same we should have finished more. We feel same we should have finished a aggregation more.
We’re still feat to be composition around here, if meet because New York is unlikely to have much use for posts about Rick Ankiel, Carl Monday and Elijah Dukes. (Not that we module not try.) But this site has been our baby, something that has been at the forefront of our minds, for three eld now, the first thing we thought about when we woke up, the terminal thing we thought about before we went to sleep. It was not a stress on our life. It was meet what we did, and what we were. So, uh, transitioning might take a tiny bit of adjustment on our part.
The tributes this hebdomad have been completely silly — we mean, we’re meet leavin’ a darned blog — and still awesome and, most important, bone-shatteringly funny. That’s all we desired Deadspin to be all along; a place where people could slip away from their chronicle for a while, take in, have some fun, then head back to the regular life, where bills must be paid, family must be attended to, jobs must be (slightly) acknowledged. You know: Kind of same sports themselves. Life is difficult. Life is scary. Diversions — real, palpable diversions, places where you can go away and frolic, and then return to the concern the artefact you found it, for better or worsened — are rare, and should be cherished. That’s what sports are. That’s what we hope this site has been. That’s what we’re certain it module move to be.
We could go through a itemize of people to thank, but we category of did that in our book acknowledgments already, and, honestly, it’s a beautiful early Friday evening in New royalty City. It’s time to head out there, see the world, enjoy what it has to offer, index everything we find and become back to report it all, breathlessly. Doing this has been the most rapturous experience of our professional lives, which is to say: It has been pretty much the most rapturous experience of our lives. (These things are always dangerously intertwined.) Every period at Deadspin has provided us huge belly laughs, and prefabricated us feel same we’re a part of something, something that you — not us — created. So yeah: Thanks.
All right: That’ll do it for us. We’ll stay away for a pair of weeks, and then we’ll pop back by to say hi, check in with everybody, see what everybody’s happy so hard about. It module now be our diversion. Like everyone else, we’ll need it, and it module be satisfactory to always undergo that it’s here.
So yeah: Hi. I’m Will. It has been my honor to be here. I do appreciate you having me.
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We’re Afraid, Dave. We’re Afraid. [Sponsors]
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