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Varsity Letters
December 20, 2006
January 3: Varsity Letters Reading Series
New York's Varsity Letters sports reading series, the event for erudite sports fans and book lovers, returns on January 3. At this free monthly event at a hip Lower East Side bar, hosted by Gelf's Carl Bialik, three prominent sportswriters will read from their works, talk about them, and take questions.
Media
December 18, 2006
Daniel Craig Publicist Denies Quote About Gay Scene, Nudity
"Daniel Craig wants a gay love scene in the next Bond movie," said a December 3 headline on Fark.com. "And he's willing to do full frontal nudity for it." In the wake of Casino Royale's worldwide box-office success, the headline, based on a paragraph-length blurb—with an ambiguous Craig quote—repeated on websites and in publications around the world, drew 619 comments and more than 41,000 clicks to the source article. But, according to Craig's publicist, the quote is "absolute rubbish." Robin Baum, of PMK/HBH Public Relations, added in an email to Gelf, "The below comments were never made by Daniel Craig."
Media
December 18, 2006
Dragonian Reviews
The movie Eragon, based on the book of the same name by teenager Christopher Paolini, has gotten terrible reviews from critics who complain about everything from the crappy, campy acting to the character and place names that sound like prescription medications. Most of all though, they take issue with how unoriginal the plot is. In his review for the Associated Press, David St. Germain describes the movie as "essentially Star Wars—with dragons. Or maybe The Lord of the Rings—with dragons."
Media
December 15, 2006
'A Bad Cross Between Monty Python's Life of Brian and a School Play'
In this week's edition of Blurb Racket—the Gelf feature in which we take a close look at those critic blurbs that are a fixture of ads for movies—see breakdowns of blurbs for The Nativity Story, Eragon, Blood Diamond, and more. This week's Bogus Blurb of the Week comes in an ad for Apocalypto:
Media
December 15, 2006
When 'Fag' Joined 'Fuck' in Realm of Taboo
Here's Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Joey Porter on Cleveland Browns tight end Kellen Winslow's late hit of Porter's teammate on Dec. 7: "That's what fags do. He's soft. He wants to be tough, but he's really soft." Porter later apologized, saying he didn't mean to denigrate gay people, only Kellen Winslow (to the great mirth of Deadspin). But what was Porter apologizing for? If you get your news from mainstream media and not blogs, you could be forgiven for being quite confused. Here are some of the replacements publications used for the word "fag," ranked by the number of characters used in place of a word of three letters:
Sports
December 12, 2006
Dropping the Ball
The NBA's new microfiber composite basketball is history; the old leather balls will return starting Jan. 1. If you weren't paying close attention, you might think that every player hated the new ball and would applaud the new decision—yet another by-product of what Mavericks owner Mark Cuban tells Gelf is a familiar occurrence in the sports media: More attention is paid to high-profile quotes than to original reporting. But not all hope is lost for the new balls. They'll be kept on hand with the teams for testing by the players, an NBA spokesman tells Gelf.
Sports
December 12, 2006
Boise Blues
Gelf wants a college football playoff. So does Sports Illustrated. In last week's issue, Phil Taylor wrote an article entitled "Playoff, Please," in which he laid out the case for a single-elimination tournament to supplant the bowl system. Taylor cited UCLA's upset of USC to argue that "strange, unexpected things can happen when teams meet face-to-face rather than in a computer's circuitry or a voter's imagination." Too bad, then, that Taylor and SI would leave undefeated Boise State out in the cold as much as the present system does.
Media
December 9, 2006
The Pulitzer Prize Picture Problem
Anyone who's worked at newspapers can tell you that some facts are cursed. You can spend untold hours trying to clear up a point, only to have it re-muddled right at the last second. A curse apparently is afflicting the attempt by Joshua Prager, a senior special writer at the Wall Street Journal, to correctly attribute a famous photo.
Sports
December 8, 2006
Voting for Yourself
Nebraska football coach Bill Callahan holds a unique place in the pantheon of USA Today poll voters. While most of his peers were busy padding their own teams' resumes by voting them higher, only Callahan had the humility to actually vote his team one spot lower than where it ended up in the final rankings.
Media
December 8, 2006
Gore Galore
Apocalypto, the Mayan adventure flick directed by Mel Gibson, has gotten mixed reviews. But no one seems to think there isn't enough violence in the film; many of the reviewers resort to simply listing the various ways in which maiming and death occur.
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