December 2010
38 posts
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“It’s like thumbing through your high school yearbook and discovering that the...”
– The amusing part about Dan Shaughnessy’s column on Tom Brady is that I know someone who went to high school with Angelina Jolie—”Angie Voight” at the time—and when I asked my friend what she was like, she said, “She was the prettiest, nicest and most popular girl in...
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Glenn Greenwald and Wired
I learned today of a fun back-and-forth between Glenn Greenwald and editors at Wired.com that is a whole lot of back and quite little forth. Greenwald wants Wired to release the full chat logs between Bradley Manning, the soldier arrested on presumption of being the “leak”er in the giant WikiLeaks dump, and Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned him in. Wired has released a partial...
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Eric Mangini, Bill Belichick and science
There was a fascinating article in the Times that I got to reading today about a physicist who found an equation to describe how cities are constructed. He found that his equation matched that of many known natural systems, where the rule is that larger equal more efficient. He uses the example of an elephant, which weighs 10,000 times as much as a guinea pig but needs only 1,000 times the...
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Ed Rendell, STFU
Ed Rendell did not become the mayor of Philadelphia, and later the governor of Pennsylvania, without sounding like tough guy. Unfortunately for him, right now he just sounds like an idiot.
You might think that the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Dallas to Miami, and changed the date to Valentine’s Day, such is the handwringing over the league’s decision to delay the Eagles/Vikings game...
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“Piggly Wiggly will debut in America in September 2012, and BBC is looking to...”
– I’m redesigning my magazine and this is a completely fictional dummy paragraph I put into a new page. Still, this is what we’re dealing with.
STFU, Phil Jackson →
We fucking get it. You “tell it like it is” or some bullshit. You have to play on Christmas Day. Boo-hoo.
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Deadspin Writer Rankings 2010
A few years ago a friend of mine to whom I regularly sent forwarded messages shot back a half-impatient missive: “Do you just read Deadspin all day?” The answer was and is yes. I like it even if I don’t like everything they publish. I could give a fuck about dong shots and, frankly, about Josh Hamilton spot-blowuppage. (There’s something to be said for calling an athlete...
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“Ray Lewis killed a man. Now he’s blowing up Saturn. W.T.F.”
– One of the few tragedies of jettisoning my old flip phone next week will be seeing this text message from Ravi when I press the scroll arrow in the wrong direction (which I invariably do). It was the first one I got after erasing my inbox, and it’s wonderful and reassuring like an old pillow,...
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Things I Can't Talk About
Something is happening that I can’t talk about and it is driving me crazy, but it’s time-sensitive and will all be over with quickly. Then I won’t care anymore. But yeepers, right now.
Lisanti Quarterly: The Ten Best Films Of 2010, In... →
marklisanti:
The Sweet-Hearted-But-Poignant Animated One We’re Supposed To Take More Seriously
The One By The Famously Exacting Director With The Great Script By The Famously Jerky Screenwriter
The One Where You’re Going Insane Waiting Around For The Crazy Thing To Happen, Then It Happens
The Super-Loony…
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The Gawkronicles, Part II
“The current cohort of Gawker Media writers seem much less conflicted than the Sicha-Lisanti-Cox-Leitch generation,” he mused. “Why is that? For the kids, maybe the literary or magazine career never seemed a possibility. For them, the New York intellectual life is a fading artifact rather than a personal dream that was painfully dashed.”
— Nick Denton, via his...
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Gawker's Epic Failure—Of Reporting On Its Own Hack
Gawker was hacked. Big deal, right? Well yes, to many people. These people are concerned that their personal information is freely available on the Internet. They have a right to be mad at Gawker’s arrogance, which was and will continue to be unchecked. (Remember how quickly the banks reverted to form after the financial collapse? It’ll be like that.) But they would be a little...
sarahsprague:
A post where someone travels back in time four months to tell themselves how their supposedly “great draft” went in the future.
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The Jayson Werth column about which my brother...
(This column was effectively rejected for publication by my brother, but I figure I’d post it anyway, just for the fun of taking some more licks.)
Jayson Werth will earn roughly as much money per plate appearance next season as the average American earns in a year.
Big salaries in sports are nothing new. They have become the costof doing business, especially in baseball, where owners are...
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(Boehner’s high-school nickname was, inevitably,... →
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“Is David O. Russell’s “The Fighter” really a boxing movie? It certainly reeks of...”
– These are the first two sentences of Anthony Lane’s review of The Fighter. Why are they here? Well, the movie is effectively a biopic… and that is the only time Mark Wahlberg is mentioned. Christian Bale, Amy Adams, David O. Russell, sure. Wahlberg/Micky Ward? Nothing.
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Just your average naked man holy war at the gym
BRYAN returns to the locker room following a “strenuous” workout. He hears voices that are increasing in volume as he gets closer, and not just because he is closer. Turning the corner into the locker room, he sees NAKED BLACK MUSLIM MAN sitting on a stool talking to J CREW-CLAD WHITE CHRISTIAN MAN, who is otherwise getting ready to leave. They are “just below shouting”...
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“What a pity times are not what they used to be. Children no longer obey their...”
– (Literal translation of message inscribed on the oldest piece of papyrus preserved by the State Museum in Instanbul)
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I received a text message Thursday morning at 1:04 a.m.: “Sox got Carl Crawford. Holy fucking shit!” I went to espn.com and saw the details: seven years $142 million. That’s something quite different from “getting” Carl Crawford. That’s buying him. Baseball’s Winter Meetings take place just before Christmas, and maybe the timing makes fans entitled to...
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“We reaffirmed our commitment to fielding a championship-caliber team and...”
– Here’s how you know the Rangers are toast:
a) They used the phrase “championship-caliber.” That’s intentional, preparing the fans for a letdown. If they got Cliff Lee, they wouldn’t say they had a “championship-caliber” team; they’d say they want to...
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Reasons to put blueberries in the blueberry beer...
1) So it tastes more like blueberries
2) So you have something to eat
3) So you can actually do something with the blueberries you bought
4) So you can watch them bounce up and down indiscriminately
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gifparty:
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The insomnia dance.
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“If the league was so concerned about the safety, why are you adding two more...”
– Hines Ward brings the truth.
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