That NBC chair Ben Silverman is flying/being pushed out of the peacock coop isn't really all that surprising. He's always been kind of a disaster. A blowhard (in more ways than one) party boy with streaks of ego and irresponsibility.

Other than his professional failures—taking big, sloppy risks and never learning from his mistakes—there were myriad personality "quirks" that just didn't bode well for a long network career in these depressed, skittish times.

First off, he was always saying dumb things. Like the time he called striking writers who refused to participate in the meaningless Golden Globes ugly nerds who were trying to ruin the cool kids' prom. Or when he basically admitted that he thinks he's the funnest guy he knows. Or hows about that time he called a bunch of his colleagues "D-Girls", the Hollywood equivalent of calling them ineffectual pussies. And who can forget when he declared himself "the perfect storm for making a television executive." (Very destructive storm being an unwittingly apt metaphor, Ben!) That he said whatever he wanted was brave! But it was also dumb.

There was also the youthfully irksome "rockstar" shtick. Silverman's partying has been called "voracious." Because, you know, he came to NBC from the relatively devil-may-care enclaves of producerdom. Those stuffy NBC suits just couldn't handle his wildin'! Wildin' like rescheduling morning meetings to the more hangover-friendly afternoon and hugging executives and signing emails, drunkenly probably, "Love U!" Or maybe they couldn't handle his gangsta freestyle? Likely, though, it was that Ben never showed up for work. He was too busy yachting and yukking it up (flirting?) with Ryan Seacrest.

Basically if you're curious about what it takes to rise from nothing, find fleeting fame and fortune, then collapse and vanish under the weight of your own expectations, just start here and keep on reading. It reads like pretty much any overly-cocky post-college narrative, only with a bunch more money involved.

He gave us so much to write about! And now, like dreams abruptly ended by alarm clocks, it's gone.