Banjos, Blood, and Baseball.
In the trailer bin of late:A frog-without-fear does his best to defend Sector 2814 in another parody trailer for The Muppets, with Jason Segal, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, and a cast of many. (It’s the...
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Lockout Time Again.
“As we slink toward the brink of an NBA lockout — if you have a doomsday clock in the family room, five minutes ’til should do the trick — we ought to look at the latest proposals to get a sort of...
View ArticleTricksters on the Borderlands, on the Throne.
“A few days ago I was watching Touch of Evil, Orson Welles’ fevered monument to America’s fear of and fascination with the Border, which opens with that famous three-minute tracking shot…It hit me...
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Half- and Half-Man Marathons.
To follow up on items mentioned here: Two weeks ago, I did in fact finish the Baltimore Half-Marathon: Total running time was 2 hours, 3 minutes, 35 seconds, so I clocked in at just under nine and a...
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Keeping an Eye on the Ball.
“It sure sounds like a fair place for two hostile opponents to meet. Half the basketball-related income goes to the owners, half the basketball-related income goes to the players and millions of pro...
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Secrets of the Five Toes.
“We were once the greatest endurance runners on earth. We didn’t have fangs, claws, strength or speed, but the springiness of our legs and our unrivaled ability to cool our bodies by sweating rather...
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Buy the Ticket, Pitch the Game.
“The two drank screwdrivers. Smoked marijuana. Talked through the night. Eventually, Ellis fell asleep. Possibly for an hour. Probably less. Around noon — maybe earlier — he took another dose of LSD....
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Djettison Django?
“Basically, Django Unchained is a B movie. A damn fine B movie, but still a B movie…Despite its slavery setting, Django Unchained isn’t an exploration of the subject. It offers no critical insights...
View ArticleThe Otter Rim.
In the Moment of Zen department, a geriatric sea otter takes up basketball. Nice inside moves — and I don’t want to be a jerk about this — but given the way the game has evolved, Eddie probably needs...
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The Shawshank Bowl.
“‘It’s startling to see a stadium will be named after them,’ Libal said. ‘It’s like calling something Blackwater Stadium. This is a company whose record is marred by human rights abuses, by lawsuits,...
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Five Men of Harvard…
…gained victory today. (Sung to the tune of this.) Per tradition, I was out in Seattle over the past weekend for my college group of friends’ annual March Madness festivities. And, for the first time...
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Keep Running Strong.
“The Marathon was the old, drunk uncle of Boston sports, the last of the true festival events. Every other one of our major sporting rodeos is locked down, and tightened up, and Fail-Safed until the...
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Back in the Game!
It’s been forty long years and we’re starvin’: So I didn’t do the usual annual NBA playoff picks this year, partly because I don’t have much knowledgeable to say about matchups like Denver v. Golden...
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America By Coach.
“You may have heard that the highest-paid employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. This is actually a gross mischaracterization: Sometimes it is the basketball...
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The Knicks Outpaced.
“‘It’s tough to go out this way,’ coach Mike Woodson said. ‘I didn’t make it happen for us and that’s what’s disappointing.’” Well, that’s that then. After the most promising season in a decade, the...
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Seven Minutes of Fury.
“In 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort…into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science.”...
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Robbing Peter to Pay DePaul.
“It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the...
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The Don, the Survivor, and the Coach.
“Anybody who had even the slightest contact with Gandolfini will testify to what a great guy he was, how full of life he was…whether he was feeling well or poorly, or living smartly or stupidly, there...
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Scholar, Journalist, Cop, Hoopster.
“‘I would say that my ideal of writing history is to give the reader vicarious experience,’ Professor Morgan told The William and Mary Quarterly. ‘You’re born in one particular century at a particular...
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Take Berk Out to the Ball Game.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can help them pick up a new pastime or two. On account of Pups in the Park night at Nats Park, Berk got to take in his first MLB game Saturday night:...
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