I’ll be hosting a reading tonight in DC at the Dodge City Bar. The last time I had a reading at a bar, it was in Austin, TX, and some of the bar’s regulars were really pissed that some uppity Yankee blogger was in the back reading out loud. One of them yelled out THIS AIN’T NO DAMN LIBRARY while he was playing pool. It was AWESOME. So come on over, get drunk, ask me if my old lady reads KSK (everyone asks this, and the answer is “not if I can help it”), and stand around awkwardly with other people. AND IT’S LADIES’ NIGHT AT THE DODGE CITY BAR*

(* – no idea if this is true)

While You Wait For The Lockout To End, Do Enjoy This Light Book-Whoring Intermission. If you like this site and you’re attending Comic Con (and surely there is cross-pollination there), then I should let you know that I’ll be at Comic Con this Saturday doing one of their panel discussions (details at the link). You can also buy copies of The Postmortal a full month before it drops in stores, and I’ll sign them for you with whatever Rex Ryan impression you like. Something really lame, like THAT’S GREAT READIN’! Also, if you aren’t at Comic Con (and thus a normal person), you should know that I’ll be making stops to whore the book out this fall in DC, Brooklyn, Atlantic City, Austin, and possibly a few more places. I’ll post details as we get nearer. It’ll be fun. SORT OF. MAYBE. TELL YOU IN A FEW PARAGRAPHS, JON.

NO! NO! TOO SEXY! TOO SEXY! Don’t tell me Santa Claus, Indiana don’t know style, or else I won’t know what to think of fashion template Jay Danforth Cutlerfu*ker posing soigne-ally for Michigan Avenue Magazine. That’s the look that gets all the teammates to share their wives with you. At the very least, it makes up for having a non-symmetrical face, which Cutler does only because he cries out of one eye. Naturally, thoughts of Cutler turn the mind to sex, so send your sexbag questions to us, unless your genitals have instantly shriveled to nothing after you’ve been consumed with the anxiety that sets in when you realize you must compete for the ladies with this.

While I’m in a reminderin’ mood – Here’s another mention that I’m doing a reading tomorrow evening at Varsity Letters in Brooklyn. Meandering speeches, monotone delivery – my reading’s gonna have it all!

[Cutler story via Deadspin]

ONE LAST TRICK FOR THIS BOOK WHORE. A bunch of filthy tech geek electro-hippies with their libraries in their bookPods were bugging me this week about when my book was going to be out for the Kindle. After a whole four days of delay, it is now available, so download away. Remember though, you can only throw the Kindle at someone’s face once (max twice) before it breaks. The Luddites win again! Anyway, if you want to hear me jabber on more about the book and football, I was on both Shutdown Corner‘s and FanHouse‘s podcast today. Also, I was on James Carville’s satellite radio show this morning, which I can’t link to, but I mention because he called the Redskins “the biggest crap organization in all of sports”. I knew there was a reason to like that guy.

WEEK OF BOOK WHORING WHORES ON. Dan Levy had me as a guest for the second time on his On the DL podcast, where we discussed the book, tackled his questionable allegiance hopping, and also touched on Favraro’s latest escapade, Vick, Shaq vs. Ben (no word on whether they made post-rape dinner plans) and assorted other topics. I also wrote a guest post for Pro Football Talk about five players off limits to haters this year (and PFT has a particularly strong contingent of haters in its readership). This also serves as your weekly reminder for the submission of sexbag questions. If you can mention how the gift of my book made your girlfriend submit to anal, all the better.

BOOK WHORESTRAVAGANZA! You didn’t think one long post of Football Fan’s Manifesto-related material was going to be enough on this, the day of glorious gushing book release? No, there’s more: a second excerpt from the book that ran this morning on The Sporting Blog, an interview with Oh No Romo, a piece I wrote about the Texans (yeah, I’ll even discuss the Texans to shop this puppy) for Stephanie Stradley’s blog on the Houston Chronicle’s site and a post Dan Shanoff wrote on his blog where he calls it “the definitive book about NFL fandom” which is only a small step below him calling it the Tebow of books.

Today marks the release of my second greatest literary achievement after the fake Philip Rivers Twitter feed, the surpassingly awesome (don’t wanna oversell it) The Football Fan’s Manifesto. So now that you’ve already pre-ordered it off Amazon, you can go purchase a reserve copy in stores for the express purpose of throwing at others. It’s bound to be the most widely read manifesto since The Washington Post and The New York Times ran Ted Kaczynski’s in full (why can’t I get that kind of play?).

And let me tell you, it’s about goddamn time. Jeebus, do book deadlines suck. I finished editing this thing months ago and have had to spend the meantime sitting around praying specific jokes and references would hold up long enough not to be outdated by the time the book even hit stores. For example, there’s one part where I mock Cleveland for its 45-year title drought. Only so the Cavs could made me sweat it out for three whole rounds of the playoffs before failing miserably! Tension, I tells ya.

Invariably, whenever I tell people I have a book coming out, they ask if I’m going on a book tour. Which is silly. Because only Leitch gets book tour money (ON TOP OF RAISIN MONEY!). I do, however, have two non-alone-naked-in-front-of-the-mirror readings scheduled for next month:

After the jump is a section that, while funny, didn’t survive the second draft of the book because my editor said it was kinda sorta wholly out of place with the rest of the book. Like dick jokes need coherence! A shame, but now you can enjoy it on the site, print it out, shove it between pages, and have your own personal simian’s cut of the book.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Few Seconds of Panic: Now priced for the blog reader demographic. Stefan Fatsis’ fantastic book A Few Seconds of Panic was recently re-issued in paperback (priced to move!), so if you never got around to reading this book the first time we recommended it strongly. It really is a great book whether or not you even care about the NFL (we’re guessing you do) so go ahead and pick up a copy. This new edition of the book also features an additional chapter on the next Redskins coach Mike Shanahan who was let go by the Broncos after the book’s initial release. For more Fatsis check out this morning’s On the DL Podcast. [Amazon]

There, I did it. I torched a beloved Terrible Towel for your malicious delectation. After all, I’m a man of my word. Now go run out and buy The Football Fan’s Manifesto in exchange for my WRENCHING ULTIMATE SACRIFICE. Or just buy it because you think it might be a entertaining read. Either way, I’ll be doing a live chat on Deadspin starting around the noontime hour today (UPDATE: Here’s the link), as they’re running an excerpt from the book, along with a bunch of photos of me relapsing into alcohol and drugs after years of clean living through religion. After the jump, another member of the Ape clan brings shame to the family.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Football Fan’s Manifesto tip contest turned bad publicity stunt that will only cause me pain and likely not lead to any additional sales has come to a head. I can’t close the poll for some reason but here are the results at midnight, when I said I would end the voting. And the piece of merch that’s going to be fried will be a Terrible Towel. You people are some suckers for symbolism, I guess.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t want to burn a towel. The ghost of Myron Cope will never forgive me. But compared to what I could have lost, this is a huge relief. Hell, I have three of them and can get more at about $5 a pop (which goes to public schools the Allegheny Valley School, so I can be smug about my meager outlay). A few canny dickbags in the comments mentioned that the Hines jersey, though a crappy replica, holds the most sentimental value for me. And they’re 100 percent right. It’s not even close. It’s by far the most valuable item to me of all the things I offered up for sacrifice. Broggel nerr smire foll week if he have buln that jelsey! Yet still you picked a towel. YOU FOOLS! I spent all afternoon panicking that I was gonna have to lose the Hines jersey. After all, I wore it in that picture that got me shitcanned from The Post. I wore the thing under another jersey during the Super Bowl because I was freaked out because I wore it during Super Bowl XL and my superstitions were running on overdrive. It’s a priceless piece of Apeiana! You could even have made me destroy one of the other jerseys or the Fathead, which set me back far more money than one of several Terrible Towels. Still, I’m gonna have to destroy a towel and probably will never hear the end of it from fellow Steelers fans this year. You’ll get your video next week, jackals.