Perhaps it is time to coordinate an emergency delivery of some rudimentary lessons about human biology to the sportswriters of America. It was less than a month ago that The Athletic’s Fred Katz mistook the basic act of “hearing things” for echolocation, and now we are confronted with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne forgetting how eyeballs work. … Read more
These playoff have had everything, from unlikely comebacks to huge upsets to bloody feuds to preternatural feats of athleticism. You can keep all that. We true connoisseurs of professional sports controversies have been craving a rulebook kerfuffle, and in Sunday’s Stars home win over the Jets, we finally got one. This is why they play … Read more
It didn’t matter that the Oilers jumped out to a 2–0 lead in Game 3. It didn’t matter that Stuart Skinner, forced back into action after Calvin Pickard’s injury, allowed fewer goals than he did in his two catastrophic starts against the Kings. And it didn’t matter that, with the score 3–2 Vegas in the … Read more
I was still reeling in the aftermath of our dog Chop’s sudden and horrible heart-failure death, stunned and breathless with grief, feeling very much the way you do after taking a hard blow to the head, when all at once our Bea became a ghost of herself. She was old, and had been thinning in … Read more
I found myself holding a baby the other day. It wasn’t my baby, because I’m old and snipped. The baby in question belonged to my best friend, Howard. Howard is my age but got married late and is having his first child. Howard’s wife, Yesenia, is closer in age to him than to Jordon Hudson, … Read more
Reliable sources tell me that you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. Until you actually read the thing, though, it’s the only data you have to go on. So here’s what I first noticed about Abundance, Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s zeitgeisty manifesto touting a construction-oriented liberalism: the wildlife. At risk of … Read more
In the light of the moon glimmering over just six square miles of a mountain range on O‘ahu, a little egg waited to hatch. Ryan Rossotto/Stocktrek Images One Sunday morning the sun rose over the mountains and—pop!—out of the egg came a tiny and very grisly caterpillar. John Elk III via Getty Images For now, … Read more
It is only sort of true to say that you know what you’re going to get when Donald Trump sits for a television interview. It is true in the sense that, after a decade spent alternately threatening and occupying the White House, everyone knows how he is going to act. There is some more uncertainty … Read more
If the play-in tournament is good for anything, it’s throwing an annual spotlight on some of the NBA’s most stuck-in-the-mud franchises. Whereas 9- and 10-seeds used to be able to slink into the offseason in relative anonymity, they are now dragged into the light for one more nationally televised, win-or-go-home game that is sure to … Read more
The summer after I got married, one of my bosses bit me on the arm. I had a lot of jobs that summer, and a lot of bosses; at the time, I was recreating the sort of interchangeable, poorly paid jobs I’d had throughout my twenties in exhausting freelanced aggregate. The boss that bit me … Read more