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Monthly Archives: October 2017

A Suitcase and Trunk

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October 27, 2017
Basketball, NBA
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Shakespeare and His Friends, John Faed (1859)

It has been a tough start to the NBA season for most, no? Only ten days ago, hope burned within the hearts of fans and players across the league, even if not necessarily to win a title – because the Golden State was absolutely going to do that, no questions asked, and Kevin Durant’s fake Twitter accounts were here to set you straight if you thought otherwise – then, at the very least, to prove themselves worthy of attention beyond the Warriors and their would-be title challengers in Cleveland, San Antonio, Houston and Oklahoma City.

Flash-forward to now, and here is an incomplete injury report, only including players hurt since the start of the season[1]: Gordon Hayward (leg-ankle[2]); Chris Paul (knee); Jeremy Lin (knee); Markelle Fultz (shoulder); Milos Teodosic (foot); Dwyane Wade (knee); and Frank Ntilikina (ankle), along with a few more. Hayward’s and Lin’s injuries were each gruesome in their own ways. Fultz’s is disrupting The Process. People are going mad in the streets and online over their favorite team’s inability to keep rotations together.

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(Approximately) 30 Thoughts on 30 NBA Teams, 2017-’18 Edition

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October 17, 2017
Basketball, NBA
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Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Well well well. Here we are again. After a four-month period that felt like several millennia, the NBA regular season begins tonight with two games featuring four of this season’s expected biggest draws: at 8 p.m. Eastern, the new-look Boston Celtics face the relatively old-look Cleveland Cavaliers, and following that, the Chris Paul-James Harden era begins as the Houston Rockets take on the current proprietors of the universe, the Golden State Warriors.

The question isn’t “Did you miss it?”; it’s how much you missed it, and in an age in which every single day is a testament to human will, the slightest reprieve can provide the biggest impact. If everything is bad, fine, but there is some reason to believe the smallest hints of light can fight back all this darkness. Best of luck to all of these teams, except for the Warriors, whose organization’s luck[1] is such that two of its four (!) All-Stars could sustain injuries, and the team would still be favored. 2017 is such a crushing time. Unless you’re a borderline Eastern Conference playoff team, which everybody is. Congratulations: we’re all borderline Eastern Conference playoff teams.

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Taking It To The Heart

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October 3, 2017
America, Folk, Music, Rock
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Via Stereogum

A funny thing about growing up with parents ceaselessly devoted to the music they like:  after a certain point, the idea of a “soundtrack” to growing up dissipates, and you’re left with a pastiche of sounds that, without warning, can trigger any number of nostalgic thoughts years, even decades, later. You didn’t ask for this, but it’s what you got. You live with it, and eventually, hopefully, you become grateful for it.

Along with a handful of other artists, I don’t remember the first time I ever heard Tom Petty because he was always just there. Not to make an assumption on your behalf, dear reader, but I’ve got a feeling that, unlike most of the rest of them for me[1], you likely don’t remember the first time you heard Petty either. He’s always been there, for all of us, which made it all the more devastating when word officially came down late Monday night that Petty had passed away at the age of 66.

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