Tuesday, November 24, 2009



I spent the past four weeks traveling to promote my book. During that time, I stayed in nine different hotel rooms. All of them had wireless. In three of the rooms, I noticed a strange phenomenon -- my connection would be fast during the day, but at night, it became so spotty that I could barely load box scores or watch even short highlight clips. On Wednesday night in Portland, the wireless was so terrible that it took me 15 minutes to watch a four-minute clip from that night's "The Ruins." I finally gave up. The following morning, the connection miraculously worked again and I was able to watch the clip.

That's when I came up with "The Porn Jammer" theory: It's my belief that certain hotels scramble their wireless at night to discourage guests from surfing for porn. Why? So they will order adult entertainment from the hotel's pay-per-view system. I know ... it's dastardly. But if you're the hotel, why give the milk away for free when you can make people pay for the cow? More importantly, would you really put it past them? This is the same business that built motion detectors into mini-bars; they're going to give up the in-room porn business without a fight? It's evil, it's desperate, it's despicable and brilliant. The Porn Jammer is my Great Call of the Week.

-Bill Simmons

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