The craziest thing I saw in the past week – *exasperated, bleeding out of my ears, walking away from the podium* – we’re just going to get this on record.
The craziest thing I saw this week, funnily and tragically enough, involved Cristiano Ronaldo by proxy. Welcome back to the White House, one of the most obviously tan people in recorded history! They know and love you here.
Read More
You know, it’s the damnedest thing – just the night before, last Monday, I watched Field of Dreams for the first time in a long while, and it reminded me that my favorite part of it is Burt Lancaster’s description of a dream that even the reincarnate hitchhiker version of himself wouldn’t achieve.
A fellow legend of apocryphal baseball ephemera, an erstwhile actor in a Rod Serling joint among many other things that mattered, Robert Redford passed away last Tuesday morning at 89. To echo the masses, we all moved up one slot in the world’s handsomest people rankings at his TOD.
Read More
Let’s leave aside the obvious for a moment — Jorge Martin’s injury, Pecco Bagnaia’s defrocking, Marc Marquez reclaiming the best bike on the grid, KTM’s financial stay of execution, the whole Liberty Media court case, CryptoData’s now expectedly collapsed vendetta against RNF — and focus instead on one very specific type of person: the much coveted theoretical fan of MotoGP who lives in the world’s largest market for sports entertainment.
Read More
One thing that you need to know about my viewing of A Complete Unknown was that I saw it with a couple of coworkers from college work-study in the heart of Times Square on Christmas Day. Later on that night, I ate some of the best risotto I’ve ever had at the home of a separate college friend from the same job in Astoria. It was a normal day, before I rung the fallout shelter bell.
Read More
The first time I got an inkling it had gone right, not left, was when a woman cloaked head to toe in MAGA gear boarded the bus on my ride home. I’ll leave aside the notable aspect that this was a bus in downtown Chicago after 11 at night: Sat alone all the way up front, I happened to notice over her shoulder from rows back that she was glued to her phone watching a map of projections that had the country awash in red. At such a remove and with my eyesight not exactly up to the task, it was impossible for me to tell which channel she was streaming, but to make the rest of my long ride home from Thalia Hall less mentally taxing — and taking in some very conspicuous context clues — I figured it was Newsmax.
Read More
One of the myriad curiosities concerning the NBA logo is not that Jerry West was the basis – he definitely was, with only the league itself refusing to acknowledge that on account of its own copyright concerns – but more why he was the basis when it was designed in 1969, before he’d won even a single championship, nevermind an MVP. Wilt Chamberlain was the flash name; Bill Russell and Bob Cousy were the gold standard winners. George Mikan, the game’s first superstar, would also have been an option[1].
Instead, they chose a stencil based on a magazine cover, and West earned a nickname with no tie to his birthplace: “Zeke From Cabin Creek” (He was actually from Chelyan). Eventually, painstakingly, he would win a title as a player, and then several more in various roles with several of the best teams in NBA history. On Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles Clippers, the last team for which he worked after a tireless life in basketball, announced that West had passed away at 86.
Read More
Despite the fact that my book intake these days gravitates toward a rather mundane mix of Guy Who Explores Framing Options For Album Covers lit that overlooks pretty much everything else, I know a thriller when I read one: A handful of players emerge, a signalpoint event occurs, fingers point in all directions, some false protagonists turn heel, a surprise hero emerges and, ultimately, the denouement.
As another sport celebrates its weather-plagued opening day, the NBA’s regular season begins its mad dash toward the next step, itself a surprising behemoth with a dose of play-in confusion to those just tuning in come April, every team is getting a little tighter, every rotation moving a bit closer to the grease board than the free-for-all of 2K.
If the time put into their leading duo is starting to get to the Boston Celtics[1], it is increasingly starting to creep on just about everybody involved with the current iteration of the Los Angeles Clippers. A good thing going now means a clock is ticking. The train arrives at noon.
Read More
In a manner of speaking, anyway. We like hearing about troubling things, acknowledging them in our own ways (“Jackass” or “Ah, damn,” usually) and moving on as soon as the tribute spot on the television allows us.
If you had the remote in your hands, you would want to bypass that, but – oh, dear! Sorry – the sponsors paid for guaranteed placement during the primetime slot, which means you have to sit through it. What was that person’s name again, and what happened to them?
Read More
“You’re still there, huh? We’re gonna do one more song, and that’s it.” His golden, overdriven guitar tone[1] was perfect. He’d already bettered Dylan in some respects; why not trying out Marvin at something way after midnight?
There’s a thing about certain Canadians (two’s a company; three’s a crowd; more: that’s a trend), A few tend to write better songs about the United States than Americans can. Familiarity breeds contempt, or something like it, but from pastoral documentation, à la Neil Young[2] and Joni Mitchell, to the psychodramaticism of The Weeknd and poptimism of Carly Rae Jepsen, some friends from The North hold the mirror up to Americans better than we can do unto ourselves.
You wanted a hit? Baby, maybe, he just did hits: “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” fit the bill. Having backed The Hawk, Ronnie Hawkins, and then Bob Dylan, Jaime Royal Robertson, who died on Wednesday at 80, ran the gamut of roles in early rock bands. Later, he’d end up having to try to save his bandmates, and then himself. He knew how to get the best out of those around him, when the bells were ringing.
Read More
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva narrowly defeated Jair Bolsonaro Sunday to reclaim the Brazilian presidency. To the casual onlooker, it might seem like a joyful refutation of Bolsonaro’s pugnacious authoritarian streak, but mostly it reminded me to dig up this pitch for the short-lived but much appreciated Pastime that was (rightfully) rejected in early 2019 just after Bolsonaro had won the last election. I hadn’t looked at it since then, but while it weakly tries to unite too much and I never did figure out an ending I liked, it may also serve as a timely reminder of how much still needs doing down there, or anywhere, and of how much it takes to make dreams a reality.
To wit: Bolsonaro is out, but Lula is back in. Eric Granado finished second in MotoE in 2022. Diogo Moreira is currently eighth in his rookie season of Moto3. There are no signs of a Brazilian MotoGP round for the foreseeable future.
Read More
Tuesdays With Horry 