Keith Gessen And The Current Events Novel

I picked up Keith Gessen’s first novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, about 18 months too late. It was published in April of 2008, but I didn’t read it until recently. You might think that there is nothing wrong with this. After all, we routinely read books several decades–or even centuries–after they are written; [...]

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The Sports Revolution: Tweaking the Olympics

Let me set the scene for you: The Games of the XXI Winter Olympiad are about to end, and they were pretty good. Let me reset the scene for you: The Games of the XXI Winter Olympiad are about to end, and they were truly transcendent. Everyone is anxiously awaiting the Closing Ceremonies, complete with [...]

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Ranking Bob Dylan Songs, #116: Freight Train Blues

There’s a scene in I’m Not There in which the character known as Woody, played by Marcus Carl Franklin and designed to embody the youthful, mythical Bob Dylan, hops onto a train with nothing but a guitar case labeled “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Once there, though, Woody finds himself confronted by unsavory characters who are [...]

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Survivor Survival Guide: “That Girl Is Like a Virus”

“There’s nobody out here that’s honorable. There’s nobody out here that’s honorable anymore—except for me. I hate to pontificate on this. Martin Luther King says that the greatest measure of a man is not in the way he handles times of comfort, but in the way he rises to controversy and challenge. There’s always hope; [...]

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The Value of Jeter, Part 2

Spring Training is underway now, which means fans and the media are gearing up for the 2010 MLB season. This season brings a lot of things: the return of Mark McGwire, another chance for the Mets’ doctors to practice, the long-awaited absence of Chip Caray. It also brings the end of Derek Jeter’s 10-year, $189 [...]

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The Double Bonus: The Talking Cure

As usual, Tim in black and John in red. In the aftermath of Bob Huggins’ ejection Monday night against Connecticut, ESPN’s Andy Katz raised an interesting question: Why do NCAA officials talk so often with coaches? Conversations between coaches and officials are much more prevalent in basketball than in pretty much any other major team [...]

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A Beginner’s Guide to Lent

Note: I know Lent started a week ago. But this is a Beginner’s Guide to Lent, not a Guide to the Beginning of Lent. Timeliness isn’t always a concern at NPI. I grew up in a Roman Catholic neighborhood, going to Roman Catholic schools, and attending Roman Catholic Mass every Sunday. So the idea of [...]

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Getting Lost: Lighthouse

It’s time for another installment of “Getting Lost,” where John S takes you through all the salient questions from last night’s episode of Lost: So, do you think Jack “has what it takes”? Well, I’ve never been one of the many Lost fans who hates Jack. For the first two or three seasons, he was [...]

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In Search of 65, Week 3

We’ve moved our weekly prognostication of the final NCAA Tournament bracket to its permanent slot on Tuesdays…finally.   MIDWEST SOUTH WEST EAST 1 Kansas Kentucky Syracuse Purdue 2 West Virginia Villanova Kansas State Duke 3 Ohio State Michigan State New Mexico Pittsburgh 4 Vanderbilt Wisconsin Temple Georgetown 5 Butler Gonzaga BYU Texas 6 Tennessee Baylor [...]

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Recapturing Greatness

With news that Fox is close to greenlighting a pilot that would team Will Arnett up with former Arrested Development co-creator and executive producer Mitch Hurwitz (as well as AD co-executive producer Jim Vallely, who wrote the scripts for some great episodes, including “Pier Pressure,” “Righteous Brothers,” and “S.O.B.s”), the big (and sometimes insularly arrogant) Arrested [...]

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