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Sports
December 1, 2008
Nick Saban Never Smiles
Nick Saban, the head coach of the top-ranked Alabama football team, has something of a dual reputation. Outside of fan circles, he's widely known as the prime symbol of college football's corporate excess and deceitful posturing. Among college-football aficionados who think $32-million contracts are not necessarily appalling, though, he's known as the ultimate hardass; the heir to the stern Bear Bryant legacy. Or as Buzz Bissinger puts it, his face is "locked most of the time in a constipated grimace."
Arts
November 26, 2008
Axl and the Banshees
We know that many music reviewers suffer from chronic creativity-deficiency, but their reliance on some arcane cliché in describing the new Guns and Roses album is a bit much. Maybe we shouldn't judge the critics too harshly, since they rarely get 17 years and $13 million to work with. But there's one thing that keeps recurring in the assessments of Chinese Democracy—in addition to those two numbers. Someone, somewhere—probably Kurt Loder—decreed that no Guns and Roses review would be complete without a comparison of Axl's voice (or howl, or screech, or wail, or take your pick) to the cry of a banshee:
Media
November 26, 2008
Anil Dash Saves Journalism
The concept of the "bailout" has at this point officially and unequivocally lost all meaning. The term, once a polarizing Hot Topic used to describe the debate about the federal government's financial rescue of major financial institutions, is now being bandied around by every major industry that can no longer look at itself in the mirror—mainly because the mirror had to be sold off. Case in point: print journalism. As an industry, journalism has been hobbling around on broken legs and unwilling advertisers for awhile now, leaving all kinds of staff crushed and unemployed in its wake, wondering where their goddamned bailout is.
Full article » | by Max Lakin
Sports
November 25, 2008
Maybe We Shouldn't Dismember Those Titans
The Tennessee Titans lost to the New York Jets this past Sunday, ending their bid for an undefeated season. But while the Titans were certainly defeated, were they dismembered? While the score was 34-13, the Titans' limbs appear intact. Sports-headline writers, in love with references to a mediocre football movie, may be disappointed by that fact.
Politics
November 25, 2008
Joe Secures His Dreams
Like a contestant on some kind of cable-news reality-TV show, Joe the Plumber is bound and determined to milk his brief, inexplicable, fame for every possible penny. By joining him on SecureOurDream.com with a Freedom Membership—which, obviously, isn't free—you can gain access to Joe the Forum, which will enable you to "chat directly with Joe," and get a subscription to the "Joe the Blog" monthly newsletter. (Monthly? Apparently Joe is not only not a real Plumber, but he's not a real blogger, either.)
Politics
November 20, 2008
Push Poll or Bad Poll?
Like many conservative talk-radio hosts, John Ziegler kind of seems like an asshole. At the end of an interview with Nate Silver, Zeigler signed off with a tart "Go fuck yourself." But the poll conducted by John Zogby International for Zeigler's anti-Obama website, while sloppy and biased, is not quite the push poll that Silver says it is.
Varsity Letters
November 20, 2008
December 4: Gelf's Varsity Letters
Gelf's Varsity Letters sports reading series returns to New York on Thursday, December 4, at 8 p.m. At this free monthly event at a Lower East Side bar, hosted by Gelf, Gary Andrew Poole, Liz Robbins, Jesse Einhorn, Nathaniel Friedman, and Jacob Weinstein will read from and talk about their work, and take questions.
Sports
November 20, 2008
Bill Simmons, Aviation Expert?
ESPN's Bill Simmons, Boston sports junkie and master of the rhetorical question, is not a master of airplane engineering. Yet, as a reader pointed out to the columnist in one of his recent mailbags, his image was used by small-aircraft maker Western Aviation on the company's "experts" page. Simmons, unsurprisingly, was confused, so Gelf decided to check it out.
Internet
November 14, 2008
Basement Bloggers
As Gelf has recently documented, Sarah Palin is the latest in a long list of well-known people to dismiss bloggers as basement-dwelling malcontents. She told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, "I'm going to characterize them as those bloggers in their parents' basement just talking garbage" (is it necessary to include [sic] when the speaker is Sarah Palin, or, is it just implied by this point?). Not surprisingly, the bloggers struck back.
Media
November 14, 2008
Fake Pundit Dupes Real Media
Martin Eisenstadt, the punditing fictional creation of filmmakers Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish, has gotten quite a bit of press lately, especially for someone who doesn't exist. He claimed to be—though he was not—the source of the infamous Sarah-Palin-thought-Africa-was-a-country rumor. He also implied, on his phony blog, that Joe the Plumber had a tryst with SNL cast member Kristin Wiig, and that the Hiltons were angry over John McCain's "celebrity" ad. And he was the star of some seemingly pro-Giuliani YouTube clips that received an inordinate amount of attention last year.
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