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Varsity Letters
May 18, 2007
June 6: Varsity Letters Reading Series
New York's Varsity Letters sports reading series returns on June 6 at 8 p.m. At this free monthly event at a Lower East Side bar, hosted by Gelf, Rus Bradburd, Donald Evans, and Rick Reilly will read from and talk about their work, and take questions. Plus, Bradburd will be playing the Irish fiddle.
Politics
May 16, 2007
The Third Party Nadir
Last week, antiwar Republican Senator Chuck Hagel told CBS's Face the Nation that he would not rule out an independent presidential bid in '08, and called on New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to join him on the ticket. Taken together with Bloomberg's recent re-launching of his personal website, Senator Hagel's comments have fueled renewed speculation about a serious independent run emerging in 2008. However, a brief look at the historical record indicates that Chuck and Mike—should they decide to team up—would face a daunting task.
Media
May 15, 2007
Turning Press Releases Into News
Monday is the typical day for reporters to unload non-perishable crap stories so they don’t have to work over the weekend. But it appears that the New York Times has decided to extend that practice to Tuesday, perhaps because of those Monday blues. For the third time in four years, an education reporter has taken spoon-fed, ridiculous PR from the ACT and tried to pass it off as news.
Sports
May 10, 2007
Not So Differently 'Abled'
When a Major League Baseball player gets hurt, he's often put on the disabled list for either 15 or 60 days so that a healthy player can be brought in to replace him. When he goes on the DL often, he can severely hamper his team's prospects and can become a target for mockery. Almost 20 years ago, the Los Angeles Times writer Mike Downey wrote that Dodger outfielder Pedro Guerrero was wondering when fellow outfielder Mike Marshall "planned to go on the Abled list." A decade later, Paul Dougherty of the Cincinnati Enquirer chimed in: "No one knows how long Reggie Sanders will stay on the abled list."
Media
May 7, 2007
Fun FOIA Facts
The Freedom of Information Act allows every citizen the right to view and copy any federal document, so long as it's not classified. It's a great tool for investigative journalists, but as a recent article in the San Francisco Examiner points out, backlogs of FOIA requests are piling up at many agencies due to bureaucracy and drawn-out disputes between requesters and agencies. Still, some facts are getting out; Gelf tracked down a few recent examples of some offbeat information journalists were able to wrangle via the FOIA.
Internet
May 6, 2007
Giving 419s an Iraqi Flavor
Gelf recently received an email from a Major Ralph Harland of the UN peacekeeping force in Iraq asking for assistance in the transfer of funds across international borders. This was a bit suspicious, because Gelf is unacquainted with such an individual. We're also pretty sure—unless some secretive accord was recently struck—that there is no UN peacekeeping force in Iraq.
Media
May 2, 2007
Bogus Blurbs Ban
Movie studios, take note: New legislation in Europe will ban the practice of extracting words and phrases from theater reviews, quoting them misleadingly, and stamping them on advertisements and billboards. At Gelf, we call this advertising practice the Blurb Racket, and run a regular column about its implementation in movie ads.
Media
May 2, 2007
The Food is Great, But You Suck
The next time you dine out in Manhattan or Brooklyn, beware. A New Yorker writer may be surreptitiously jotting down your mannerisms and bloviations in preparation for passing judgment on you in the front pages of his rag. That's because the magazine's relatively brief food reviews often devote as much space to eavesdropping on whoever happens to be in a restaurant the same night as the critic, as to the food itself. Here are a few examples from some recent Tables for Two reviews.
Varsity Letters
April 30, 2007
Varsity Letters 5/2 Interviews
Authors of the books featured on our front page will be speaking spoke at a free Gelf event in New York on Wednesday, May 2, at 8 p.m. Come Thanks for coming by the Happy Ending Lounge to hear writers Mike Freeman, Jeremy Schaap, and Michael Weinreb read from and discuss their writing.
Media
April 27, 2007
The Next Bad Thing
If the creators of the new sci-fi premonition thriller starring Nicholas Cage could really see into the future, perhaps they wouldn't have named their film Next. Reviewers have taken the lame title for the equally lame movie and, predictably, turned it into a cutting criticism of the work. Here are a few headline samples:
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