STEPHEN RODRICK

I arrive a month premature, with my dad's brains but not much else.

From the outside, Rick Rubin's house above Zuma Beach is a generic millionaire beach home. There's a rarely used tennis court and a circular drive.

The everybody-loves-Jeff Bridges home base is, of course, 'The Big Lebowski.'

I was a classic attention deficit disorder kid, always bored and mouthing off at school.

There's no doubt Matt Leinart loves his son very much.

Before Angelina Jolie became a humanitarian, she was best known for wearing a vial of blood around her neck and kissing her brother.

I've seen few things more depressing than the end-of-season Giants-Padres series in 2001 in which Barry Bonds hit his 68th homer of the year while a .227-hitting, rapidly fossilizing Rickey Henderson staggered like a delirious marathoner toward 3,000 hits.

As anyone who has read 'Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin knows, it's quite possible to write an unreadable column without being a TV pundit. But if you want to be a consistently good columnist, you can't be on television.

'TMZ' took the illusion of privacy away. Now the paranoid star just assumes someone is always there. Decoy cars and false itineraries are floated to throw 'TMZ' off the scent.

I tested in the top percentile for IQ, but I couldn't tie my shoes or really ride a bike without training wheels until I was almost 7.

Think about it: You're trying to raise cash to save an endangered animal. You've got orphaned pandas getting 3 trillion YouTube hits, and you've got seals being clubbed over the head by roughnecks. The money flows in. But what about the poor shark?

I grew up in a town without fathers.

Stephen A. Smith is the hardest-working man in sports show business. The ubiquitous basketball pundit appears on ESPN about 10 times a day as a regular on the show 'NBA Fastbreak,' a guest commentator on 'Sports Center,' and a pundit on 'ESPNEWS.'

Ever since Mike Tyson was champ, twenty-something dudes have microwaved nachos, popped opened Natty Lights, watched sharks do unspeakable things on TV, and whispered a billion 'Whoa, dudes.'

'TMZ' has the cash to buy off valets and info like flight lists or even the limo list of what celeb is being picked up where and when.

Peter Rodrick was one of only around 4,000 men in the world qualified to land jets on a carrier after dark.

Unlike the LeBrons and A-Rods of the world, anointed as special from pre-K, Matt Leinart exudes an approachability rarely seen in superstars. It's why kids on the autograph line chat him up like a buddy with whom they could stay up late playing Xbox.

There are times when a sports figure doesn't deserve sympathy.

In college football, fans wallow in a culture of failure. Unless you root for Miami, you sadly wait for disaster to strike your team in a manner not seen outside of Fenway Park.

If nothing else, the act of reaching a milestone often serves to reveal a superstar's true nature.

Baseball loyalists cite the game's legendary numbers - 300 wins, 500 homers, 3,000 hits - as evidence of the sport's elegance, beauty, and gravitas. What no one mentions is how wretched and painful it is to actually watch a former star gasp and sputter his way toward a legendary number.

James Salter has been a fighter pilot, a rogue, and a climber. He counts Robert Redford as a friend.

Celebs that hit the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills quadrant and places like the Urth Caffe are not exactly trying to keep a low profile; it's sort of like if LeBron James went to an ESPN Zone and then whined about being hounded for autographs.

Lance Armstrong has a 17th-century, 15-foot Spanish fresco of the crucifixion hanging on the wall of his Austin mansion. This doesn't mean - and some of you Armstrong acolytes might want to sit down for this - that Lance is Jesus.

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