Dr. V's magical putter

"dress-up role-playing" ... pretty fucking harsh.

 

Here's the whole thing. It's vile. But, at least we treated it as a learning opportunity, right guys?

For those of you who don't pay close attention to the movements and personalities of L.A. market sports print journalists ... and that's just about all of you, I know ... we've had some in-the-flesh sightings of former L.A. Times writer Mike Penner.

Penner is the guy who announced in, what, April? that he would henceforth be living as a woman, name of Christine Daniels. He/she was born a man, lived as a man for about 50 years, was married, etc. ... but always wanted to be a woman, and told the world so in a column the L.A. Times ran.

Quite a drama, that is. But none of us had actually seen Mike ... uh, Christine ... since the announcement. Aside from her friends in the biz.

Mike/Christine had been fairly careful about being specific about the plumbing/lifestyle side of things ... until a Sports illustrated column by Rick Reilly a few weeks ago in which our SoCal colleague revealed he often had locked himself in the bedroom and tried on women's clothes and took snapshots -- that he kept under lock and key. Hmm. He also said he "wasn't suicidal, but could see it from there." Something like that.

Anyway, Christine had been mostly a rumor. Out of men's clothes ... but not out on the job.

That changed over the past 10 days. We were at the Beckham introductory thing at Home Depot Center ... and were heading upstairs for the small-scale interviews in the suites ... when I spotted a very large woman ahead of me ... and it struck me, "Whoa. That's Mike Penner. Christine."

Anyway, I feel bad for the guy/girl. From what little I've seen of the blog he/she is doing, she (I'm gonna try to stick with the female thing now) seems quite happy. Buoyant, even. Massively relieved to be living as a woman. And that's fine.

But ...

I hate to be judgmental about these things, but Christine is not an attractive woman. Which probably isn't a surprise when you're 50 and have spent your in-the-world life as a fairly drab guy. Who has a fairly prominent Adam's apple (not all of us do) ... Who also isn't exactly petite. Maybe 6-1, 200?

So ... she looks like a guy in a dress, pretty much. Except anyone paying any attention isn't going to be fooled -- as some people are by veteran transvestites.

Another guy in the business was sitting near me when "Chris" wobbled by on her mid-size heels, and she demurely said hello to this other guy, who is about the same age as the two of us. And this guy said, "Hey, Mike ... uh, Christine." He was embarrassed because he wanted to get it right, but he didn't. Christine said something like, "Some habits are hard to break." She was kind about it.

The thing is, and maybe this is cruel, but there were women in that room who were born women in body as well as soul. And the difference between them and Christine was, in my mind, fairly stark.

It seemed almost as we're all going along with someone's dress-up role playing ... and I assume it's far more important than that inside this person's head. But it's going to take a while for the Average Joes among us to get our minds around this. And I've got to assume Christine understands that.

That was from 2007. How far have we come since then?

 

Someone ought to interview Paul now, what? 6 years later? Get his take on Dr. V vis-a-vis Christine.

Unless, Paul is here and has posted.

 

He's on twitter and LinkeIn. He shouldn't be too hard to reach.

 

And this knee-slapper: Hannan getting all huffy with a free-lancer for the alt publication he edited in Seattle.

http://thebiglead.com/2014/01/24/caleb-hannan-is-getting-sued-for-journalistic-misstep-prior-to-controversial-grantland-story/

 

It's amazing the hard-ons other sites have for Grantland.

Maybe Grantland should stick to the safe stuff like this...

http://thebiglead.com/2014/01/22/minnesota-gopher-chicks-take-stupid-selfies-with-stupid-bedazzled-phone/

 

A site funded by the biggest player in the business, given the budget to hire top writing and editing talent, the space to run long form pieces, and the freedom from the need to turn a profit, which allows them to run more off beat stuff, and give new, young writers a chance, yeah, I wonder why folks might look at them critically.

They set very lofty goals for themselves. They are the anti-Deadspin, and invite, and deserve a different level of scrutiny.

They get praise here a lot. For good reason.

When they fuck up, and take two days to realize it, and five days to admit it, they deserve to get knocked around for it.

And, Simmons and Hannan still haven't answered a single (on the record) question from an independent journalist.

 

Since when did the essay become the preferred vehicle for elite journalism?
That is, before Grantland came around.

 

Sports Illustrated?

They don't exactly cram 473 stories into BASW, either.

 

The picture that Grantland never provided:

 

Gerri Jordan speaks with the Republic:

 

One other interesting point from Jordan: she says Hannan got only one fact wrong in the entire piece.

"Dr. V" was 6'1", not 6'3".