I know how people feel about my writing. It’s occasionally palatable but mostly disappointing. It’s comparable to pulling the trigger on the beauty-impaired, large-breasted floozy who’s still around (and alone) near last call. Much like bedding a chesty brown-bagger, my words are fleetingly enjoyable, usually regrettable, and certainly are not a source of pride. But hey, that’s better than nothing, right? So you can imagine my surprise when I saw that a blogger had seemingly hijacked my mediocre prose.
Steve Lepore explains what his blog, PuckTheMedia, is about. But who watches the watchmen, Steve???
The first time I had heard of PuckTheMedia was a few weeks ago. I decided to check out the PuckDaddy (Yahoo’s NHL blog) liveblog for the Red Wings/Penguins game that night. After making a few comments of relatively low value, my parade was promptly rained on. That’s when “Steve Lepore” harshly dismissed my attempt to make a joke about Mike Emrick’s penchant for repetition.
Via PuckDaddy:
8:17 [Comment From BigLeagueScrew.com]
OVER/UNDER: Emerick says “knifed away” and “flexed away” 20 times8:18 Steve Lepore:
Big League Screw: Come back and make that joke again when you can spell Emrick, please.
At first, I thought I may have traveled back in time to an early 90’s AOL chat room. Did I really just get zinged by some asshole for a minor spelling error? I hoped, for Steve’s sake, that it was just a joke that happened to be worse than mine. In a state of disbelief, I quickly googled “Steve Lepore” and found out he was the man behind PuckTheMedia. Lepore’s tagline for his site is “Steve Lepore Gives a Dose of Reality to The Hockey Media”. That’s a hardcore mission statement. The only problem is there’s no hockey media that anybody (other than Steve Lepore) cares about. I decided that it was pointless to respond to the guy and forgot about it.
Then a few days ago, I saw a link to an NHL Awards review that happened to be on PuckTheMedia. It was a relatively short piece and I was shocked when I got to the second paragraph. That’s because it read exactly like my NHL Awards review that I had posted days earlier. It turns out that it was actually written by a person calling themselves “wraparoundcurl” and not our up-to-this-point-villain Steve. It’s true; I didn’t invent parentheses and I’m not the only guy hilarious enough to trash Robin Thicke, Chaka Khan, and Nickelback. But it’s pretty hard to deny that the structure, tone, and details are nearly identical to what I had written. Here are the two excerpts for comparison:
Posted on BigLeagueScrew on June 19:
What happened at the NHL Awards? Well, I read a hilarious pre-event headline that said “Robin Thicke and Chaka Khan among star headliners of 2009 NHL Awards”. And yes, it is confirmed that Chaka Khan (what the hell) and Robin Thicke (really? REALLY?) performed. Nickelback was what I expected and probably would been more acceptable even though they’re horrible. They’re not a better band but they’re slightly less — ahem — pussy.
Posted on PuckTheMedia on June 21:
The esteemed Chaka Khan (Chaka Khan) really is perfect for Vegas, justtttt not for the NHL Awards. There was a weird age gap thing going on. The awards felt like 1993, when Vegas was dying because it still thought it was the era of the Rat Pack. Robin Thicke is so smooth and lovely, but uhm more for the ladies I think. I was actually a bit shocked the NHL couldn’t scrounge up Nickleback. Or even Poison.
Hey, the “cover” version of my post was pretty funny too. The writer was thoughtful enough to add a couple more references and another band suggestion. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that my words may have simply “inspired” them. Maybe the rehashed version of my post is the result of a Maureen Dowd-Huffington Post style “inadvertant lifting”. Maybe not. At the very least, we can all laugh at the fact that a blog critiquing sports media is potentially guilty of shoddy journalism. My message to PuckTheMedia: come back and start a blog when you can write your own posts, please.
Tags: bloggers, chaka khan, las vegas, nhl awards, plagiarism, puckthemedia, robin thicke, steve lepore, wraparoundcurl
Taken to task!
The nice thing about this for PuckTheMedia is the fact that if they ever find someone has cribbed one of their articles, they have their template now for their public response.
Haha, Zing! I propose a blogger war similar to the one you had with LadyKiefer over your OCD post on Sutherland's hot dog rampage last year. Don't back down from this Lepore prick.