It's hard to imagine there have been many times in the young master Reilly's life when he wished his dad wasn't a sportswriter, but the day he read this had to be one of them. We can only hope that he got an advanced copy of the column, with a nice handwritten note from his padre.
Dearest Jake,
I wanted to drop you a note and let you know just how disappointed I am in you, son. Even though I'm a world famous writer, sometimes I can't find the right words to express my displeasure with just how little you've accomplished in your life. I hope this article comparing your rudderless existence to that of an impossibly rich and famous basketball star, helps you to understand my pain.
Love - Dad
P.S. Your Mom says hi.
NBA PR flacks keep telling me that Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant is "just like any 22-year-old kid." They say he does not have a torrid affair going with his wallet or his mirror or his league-stomping 29 points per game. "Perfectly normal," they insist ... So I called their bluff. I met Durant in Chicago, and I brought along a perfectly normal 23-year-old kid -- my son, Jake.
Buckle up ladies and gentlemen, Riles is about to expose the hypocrisy of the NBA PR machine (he should leave that to the professionals like us). Shit is about to get CRAZY!! Let's just hope he put the right postage on his column.
Wages: Kevin makes an average of $17 million a year playing for the Thunder, plus $8.5 million a year from Nike.
Jake, a student at Chicago Portfolio School, makes about $5,400 a year as a part-time barista. That's $8.95 an hour, or about $103,649 an hour less than Kevin. Then again, Kevin doesn't get tips.
"Why couldn't you be a famous basketball player, Jake!?!? Then I could stop pumping out these garbage columns for an hour a week and go play golf full time!!"
Home: Kevin rents a seven-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot mansion in Oklahoma City with its own theater.
Jake rents half of a 450-square-foot apartment. His bedroom has no closet, so he keeps his clothes on two chairs at the foot of his bed. It's above a stitch-'em-up medical center. "It's open 24/7," Jake says, "for round-the-clock stabbing convenience."
Family: Kevin's father left him when he was 8 months old and returned 12 years later..
Jake's dad, Rick, signed a 5-year $10m contract with ESPN in 2007. Rick now makes his son sling lattes for $9 an hour, plus tips of course.
Advantage: Kevin.
On second thought, maybe this column is really about how much of a shitty father Rick Reilly is. Seriously, Rick? Your son lives in a place that has a 24-hour clinic for "stabbing convenience?" Can't help the poor kid out?
Cars: Kevin owns a sweet conversion van with TVs, an Xbox, and a pull-out bed. He also has a $128,000 Mercedes S63 AMG and a Maybach, whose price he won't discuss, though Diddy just bought his 16-year-old son one for $360,000.
Jake takes the bus or walks between home, his job and portfolio school. It's 20 minutes between all three. It forms a kind of ragged isosceles triangle, as does the hole in his right shoe.
That's it, we're calling DYFUS.
Kevin wants to win an Olympic ring, a mess of NBA rings and more NBA scoring titles. … Jake is trying to beat the high score on the Ms. Pac-Man in the laundromat down the street. "I'm seventh right now, but the thing's been plugged in since the '60s, so …"
.... maybe you need a girlfriend ... or therapy and some welbutrin."
Shopping: Kevin goes into Nordstrom "about every two weeks" and spends between $500 and $600. As we speak, he's wearing a beautiful high-collared cashmere white number.
Jake refuses much help from his fretting parents and is bent on making it mostly on his own, so he shops at Goodwill sometimes. "It's sad when you're in there in October and realize you're the only one not shopping for Halloween costumes."
Is this like ant intervention in print? Admit you need help Jake, please!!
Recent moment of glory: Kevin was just named the Western Conference Player of the Week after scalding New Orleans with 43 points, and he will start for the West in the All-Star Game on Feb. 19 in L.A. Jake just shimmied out on the ledge of his apartment building in a snowstorm, at 3 a.m., to unplug the stitch-'em-up medical center's huge neon sign outside his bedroom window. He did it with a deconstructed coat hanger and his roommate holding him by the pants legs. He had to. The sign was so bright he couldn't sleep. "Really?" Kevin says, awestruck. "Man, that sounds like a movie!"
Yes, in fact it's going to be Keanu Reeves' comeback movie. "The Sign": Summer 2011. Soundtrack by Ace of Base.
Annoyances: Kevin gets calls every day from people asking for something. "Shoes, clothes, tickets, money," he says. "A thousand here, $500 here, $25,000 there. I don't mind [giving it] if it's friends who're struggling. But people just think money grows on trees. My mom used to say that when I was a kid. Now I know what she meant."
Jake: "I know, right? Seems like my landlord is asking me for money every single month."
Woah, Jake with the witty retort. Kevin didn't get it.
Favorite restaurants : For both, it's the Wendy's 99-cent menu, but only Jake is lucky enough to eat it nearly every day.
Also, Jake will have a heart attack by 25.
Bad habits: Kevin has already sent more than 15,000 tweets in his young life. Jake has already lost more than 15,000 cell phones in his young life.
Ungrateful little bastard.
College degree: Kevin left Texas after one year but is trying to get his degree, as he promised his mom. "At the rate I'm going, it's going to take 13 more summers," he says. "I don't think I'd get it if she wasn't on me to do it." Jake earned his in four years from Wisconsin.
"Of course, we tried to tell him to apply to a good school like Northwestern. But, no. He wanted to go to a place where he could have fun. I think we can all see where that got him. If only he had listened to his father."
Future employment: Kevin wants to start his own record label. This would make him the 11,373rd NBA player with one. Jake hopes to be an ad copywriter at a major Chicago advertising firm by next January.
Jake, of course, will be unemployed.
Embarrassing fathers: Kevin says his dad, a federal police officer at the Library of Congress in D.C., still thinks he's 20 years old. "He wears the same clothes I wear. It's kinda crazy." Jake points an accusing finger at me. "I caught him in an Ed Hardy shirt the other day. That's not good. That's not good at all." They look at each other and nod solemnly.
It's nice to know these two kids from different walks of life can agree on something - Rick Reilly is a douche.
No comments:
Post a Comment