May 2013
1 post
Five Crappy Jokes Based on TV On the Radio's "Wolf...
Tunde Adebimpe is ghostwriting Michael Dorn’s autobiography. It’s called “Worf Like Me.”
Tunde Adebimpe is teaching a monthly seminar on how dog owners can impress their pets. The promise: “When the moon is round and full, gonna teach you tricks that will blow your mongrel’s mind.”
Tunde Adebimpe hides copies of his second album, Return to Cookie...
April 2013
2 posts
This is the greatest joke of my (or anyone else's)...
Setup.
Punchline.
Top 10 The National Songs
Fashion Coat
Runaway
90-Mile Water Wall
Fake Empire
Mr. November
The Geese of Beverly Road
Daughters of the Soho Riots
Apartment Story
Secret Meeting
It Never Happened
Just because Paul’s doing it.
March 2013
4 posts
Jurickson Profar the Philanthropist
I was kind of surprised when the Rangers called up No. 1 prospect Jurickson Profar late last season, but apparently manager Ron Washington insisted after hearing a story from Profar’s minor league days that led Wash to believe Profar to be the kind of good-natured, kind-hearted soul that would have a positive clubhouse impact down the stretch.
You see, there was a youth baseball academy not far...
The Turko-Belgian Hockey Fan
When I was in college, I spent a summer studying European politics in Brussels. Brussels gets a bad name because it’s between Paris and Amsterdam, but isn’t either of those cities, and because it’s not full of drugs and whores on the one hand or snotty wastrels on the other, nobody ever visits it.
Which is a shame, because I can think of no better city for me than the capital of a multilingual...
Shoot the Manager
Baseball in the mid-19th Century was more like the Wild West than the modern-day major leagues in terms of playing conditions, attitudes and, surprisingly, the amount of violence surrounding the game.
It’s a little-known story that, in 1882, Chicago White Stockings (the team that would become the Cubs) owner Albert Spalding, once considered having his manager killed.
Spalding, who had just...
Noel Gallagher, Violence and the Manchester Derby
Back in the late 1990s, when Oasis was at the peak of its popularity, the Gallagher brothers found themselves at a club in downtown Manchester.
Even though Manchester is a pretty big city, there are only so many places young men with more money and ego than they know what to do with can go, so the Gallaghers soon found themselves in a room with David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Roy Keane—in...
February 2013
2 posts
Going Over Hadrian's Wall
When the Roman Empire conquered a country, the centurions would often conscript locals into the army as a way of recovering from personnel losses before moving on to conquer the next tribe.
Circumstances in the Roman-occupied British Isles were no different. Roman legionnaires would, from time to time, hop over Hadrian’s Wall, capture local men and train them to fight. Now, when...
How NASA and the Sports World Avoided Disaster
In 1986, Rice University sponsored a sports business conference in Houston, Texas. One of the first of its kind, it featured a laundry list of big names in coaching and upper management—it was one of the last big appearances for Dodgers GM Al Campanis before the Nightline interview that forced him to leave baseball in disgrace. Red Auerbach spoke, as did Glen Sather, the management of the...
January 2013
6 posts
My Top 10 Favorite TV Episodes of All Time
“Middle Ground”—The Wire, S3E11
“Shut the Door. Have a Seat”—Mad Men, S3E13
“Unfinished Business”—Battlestar Galactica, S3E9
“20 Hours in America”—The West Wing, S4E1
“Commissions and Fees”—Mad Men, S5E12
“Modern Warfare”—Community, S1E23
“In the Pale Moonlight”—Star...
3 tags
Ten Artists Whose Work I Admire Immensely, but I'd...
Jonathan Franzen
Aaron Sorkin
Win Butler
Brian May
Russell Crowe
David Byrne
Ridley Scott
Dan Harmon
Ronald D. Moore
Bruce Springsteen
3 tags
My Ten Greatest Writing Influences
Jonathan Franzen
Robert A. Heinlein
Dylan Thomas
Simon Kuper
David Foster Wallace
Graham Greene
Joe Posnanski
Bill Simmons
Drew Magary
Aaron Sorkin
3 tags
Ten Most Impressive Athletic Performances I've...
Tim Tebow, football, University of Florida vs. University of South Carolina, 2007 (It’s really this, a huge gap, then the rest of the list)
Ryan Roushandel, men’s soccer, University of Central Florida vs. University of South Carolina, 2008
Candace Parker, women’s basketball, University of Tennessee vs. University of Arkansas, 2006
Josh Johnson, baseball Florida Marlins vs....
3 tags
My Ten Favorite Musical Compositions
I’m going to start making top-10 lists based on my own personal feelings and experiences, and only explain them as much as I want to and no more.
My ten favorite pieces of music.
“Piano Sonata No. 8 (Pathetique)”-Ludwig van Beethoven
“Your Hand in Mine”-Explosions in the Sky
“Neighborhood No. 1 (Tunnels)”-Arcade Fire
“First Suite in Eb for...
5 tags
How to Mail a Bird of Prey
One summer in college, I volunteered at an animal hospital in the Pine Barrens. We’d take in injured or sick wildlife, for the most part, nurse them back to health, and release them after a while. We mostly took care of raccoons, small birds, maybe the odd deer. I remember a few baby ducks that came in around mid-June that I got to see released the week I went back to school. Really hard...
December 2012
1 post
6 tags
Some Belated Thoughts on Jovan Belcher
I bring this up not because I have anything original to say, but because I want to highlight a particularly insightful comment.
On Monday’s Hang Up and Listen podcast, Slate magazine’s Josh Levin called Belcher’s story “a Rorschach test.” It’s been a while since I’ve encountered a comment in sports analysis that is simultaneously so uncommon and so...
November 2012
7 posts
5 tags
College Stories
When I was a high school sophomore or so, I started looking at colleges. I wanted a certain size of school, with a certain major, in a certain environment, but one of the kind of off-beat things I looked at was the gender ratio.
You see, I wasn’t particularly popular in high school, and my dad had told me once that I would probably meet my future wife in college. So in the interest of not...
4 tags
On Cooking During the Blitz
During World War II, even as The U.K. was being bombed into the Stone Age by Luftwaffe bombers, the English aristocracy still functioning as normal.
King George VI, recently immortalized in Colin Firthiness, was famously particular about his eating habits. He was very fond of cuisine from Southeast Asia, often eschewing traditional English food for some spicy seafood he’d encountered first...
7 tags
On Massages in Las Vegas
On the day the 2012 NHL season ended, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf, his team eliminated from playoff contention, took off on vacation. Through his well-publicized relationship with actress Elisha Cuthbert, Phaneuf has developed friendships with several Hollywood celebrities, among them Alan Tudyk of Firefly and Dodgeball fame.
Upon the conclusion of Toronto’s season, Phaneuf and...
6 tags
On Francisco Franco, Exotic Pets and Eating While...
I’m not sure how many of you know this, but Generalissimo Francisco Franco kept a large menagerie at his private residence outside of Madrid. He was particularly fond of a pair of black bear cubs he’d adopted after a vacation in the Canadian Rockies. He and his staff of trainers did a remarkable job of taming the two bears, named Baloo and Mowgli (the Generalissimo was fond of the work...
4 tags
The Marcus Vick Counterfactual
Please trade my brother. We requesting out of Philly!!!! Please please please……
— Marcus Vick (@MVFive) November 6, 2012
I grew up a Virginia Tech football fan. And I will never forgive Marcus Vick for what he did. Since he’s back in the news tonight, I thought I’d clue you in on a particular thing that’s bothered me for years.
Marcus Vick cost Virginia Tech the...
2 tags
What Do You Have....
…when on the one hand you have a double agent played by Angelina Jolie, the whiny blond boy from The Hunger Games and a toilet and on the other you have cookware, a Swedish pop band and a really strong wind?
“Salt, Peeta, John.” ”Pans, ABBA, gale.”
Supermarket Condiment Power Rankings
Apologies to the various restaurant sauces I’ve consumed and enjoyed.
Frank’s Red Hot
Kikkoman’s yellow curry
Vinegar (Ideally, Heinz malt vinegar, but to each his own)
Chinese hot mustard
Bleu cheese dressing
Honey mustard dressing
Thai chili sauce (Frank’s makes a decent one for starters, but you can find better)
Raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing
Soy sauce
...
October 2012
3 posts
4 tags
On Anti-Semitism in Medieval Spain
One of the more interesting bits of European history, at least from my perspective, is the end of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula in the 15th Century. I really wish it were a Caliphate until it collapsed in 1492, because “Caliphate” is a really cool word, perhaps my favorite name for an autocratic state, but I’ll have to live with my disappointment.
So we all...
1 tag
Afterbirth
@gberry523: “just how much did that debate format suck [Wednesday] night?”
It was awful, but Mitt Romney played it the way Tiger Woods played Augusta. Never have I seen such obvious contempt for a moderator. Romney took the opportunity to run riot over not only Jim Lehrer but Barack Obama as well (if for no other reason than it looked like Obama hadn’t been informed that there was a debate on...
2 tags
Phillies Commentary Not Good Enough for Crashburn...
Chase Utley, considering a position change:
“2B or not 2B. That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the swings and errors of outrageous Frandsen…”
September 2012
2 posts
Wedding Dances
Along with my fiancee, I’ve been planning a wedding recently, and I’ve been thinking about line dances. They’re fun, but some of them are extremely annoying. For instance, under no circumstances will the “Cha-Cha Slide” be played.
In the interest of not taking up too much of the reception with coordinated dancing, I suggest mashing my favorite songs into one, with the help of a DJ.
Among the...
3 tags
Why the NHL Lockout is Representative of The Fatal...
Early Sunday, upon the expiration of the outgoing collective bargaining agreement, the NHL’s owners voted to lock out the players for the third time since 1994. In 2004-05, the NHL became the first major North American sports league to lose an entire season to a work stoppage, and now that that collective bargaining agreement is up, the owners are once again locking out the players, despite...
