The Art of Limitations, the Limitations of Art

Bill Simmons is hands down my favorite sports writer. He's funny, he's irreverent, he's topical, and maybe most importantly, he speaks the vernacular of the fan. The "eye test" is a big one when you read Simmons' writing or listen to his podcasts. That is to say, if a sportsman looks like he sucks, he probably sucks, no matter what the media or basic statistics claim. At the same time, he's a big proponent of advanced metrics, which are statistics that take a lot of context into consideration, creating statistics that are often more in line with those "eye tests."

Last week, Simmons held a podcast with Patton Oswalt, who is easily one of my favorite comedians. Oswalt was on to hype his book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. One of the topics the book covered, and that Simmons and Oswalt went on about at length, were the struggles of the comedian in the 80s and 90s, and how niche comedy has found a place thanks to the Internet and Twitter. The pair agreed, the open nature of consumption of art is a capital letter Good Thing.

To an extent, I agree.

We'll come back to this after the jump.