« Previous page |
Next page » |
Internet
November 6, 2006
Really Perverted Justice
Another bizarre side effect from our nation's misguided anti-pervert campaign: This week, former Kaufman County, Texas, District Attorney Louis Conradt shot himself after PervertedJustice.com and NBC tried to entrap him for soliciting, online, someone posing as a 13-year-old boy (Associated Press). A couple of months ago, Gelf came down hard on such sensationalist pervert vigilantism, and specifically noted that Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" and sites like Perverted Justice were causing more problems than they were fixing. Now, a legally innocent man is dead.
Sports
November 3, 2006
Dodging the Problem
If the recent, anybody-can-win-the-title years of Major League Baseball seem like a welcome break from the half-decade of Yankees dominance, consider that, according to the New York Times, "this current period has a long way to go to match the previous period in which a different team won each year. From 1978 through 1990, 12 different teams won the World Series. Those 12 were half of the major league population in those years." But it turns out the NYT needed to recheck its figures.
Sports
November 2, 2006
Did He Eat the Worm?
David Eckstein is a teetotaler. Well, not totally—he'll drink the sauce on special occasions, like when he wins a World Series. Consider it a new rule of sports: Win a title, and no-booze rules are drowned with the champagne and the tequila.
Media
October 30, 2006
Madonna's Media Spawn
When Gelf headlined its coverage of a certain celebrity's recent Malawian adoption "Madonna and Child," we thought we were being clever, if slightly unoriginal. What we didn't realize was exactly how passé our headline was. A quick check of other media reports on the adoption story shows that several hundred other editors followed the exact same impulse.
Media
October 27, 2006
Madonna and Child
In this week's edition of Zooming In, Gelf's quasi-weekly roundup of undercovered local stories from around the world: Norwegian vodka; conjugal visits for an assassin; and anal lightning. One of our favorites deals with international reaction to a certain celebrity's recent adoption.
Sports
October 27, 2006
Real-Time Baseball Odds
One of the reasons televised poker became a hit was because it allowed viewers at home to see each player's probability of winning the hand, and how each new card dealt affected those odds. We won't see it in Fox's broadcast of tonight's World Series game, but baseball broadcasts could be similarly spiced up by judiciously showing each team's probability of winning—and how every important home run, strikeout, bunt, and stolen base affects those odds.
Media
October 24, 2006
To Blog or Not to Blog
What value do New York Times arts reviewers place on web writing? It depends on which one you read. Two reviewers came to very different conclusions on the same page of last Friday's paper.
Media
October 24, 2006
The Movie's OK. But Let Me Tell You My Views on China.
Gelf, which regularly reads multiple reviews of the same movie for its semi-regular look at the racket of film ads, has noticed several critics are getting geopolitical. Perhaps tired of the confines of determining whether a movie is good or not, reviewers are weighing in on Africa's woes, China's rise, the Vatican's obfuscation, and British society in a manner beyond their job description. Here's a recent sample:
Sports
October 23, 2006
Divine Providence for Detroit
The Tigers' remarkable turnaround—from a near-record 119 losses in 2003 to a still-terrible 91 losses last year to this season's World Series—wasn't easy to predict. In fact, Gelf could find only two people who can claim prescience. The first one, Sparky Anderson, managed Detroit to its last World Series championship, in 1984. The second savvy prognosticator is God Himself.
Media
October 23, 2006
Forget About It
Planning to write an article about Martin Scorsese's new film The Departed that isn't chock-full of gangster clichés? Fuggedaboudit. Or fuhgetaboutit. Or fuggetaboutit. Lots of writers want to use the famous New York-ism, but few agree on its spelling. Here are some of Gelf's favorites:
« Previous page |
Next page » |
About Gelflog
The Gelflog brings you all the same sports, media & world coverage you’ve come to love from Gelf Magazine, but shorter and faster. If you’d like, subscribe to the Gelflog feed.
Subscribe to the Gelflog RSS