Monday Medley

What we read while celebrating Ryan Longwell’s return to Lambeau….

• We linked a few weeks ago to Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker analysis of football and head trauma. Gladwell’s article brought to the fore some issues that have been latent in football for some time (Wait…you mean this is a dangerous sport?), as seen by the attention it’s getting now from Congress and from former Chief Michael Oriard on Deadspin. (What we’d like to see more attention on: the horribly misfigured fingers of former football players. You can see a little with Ted Johnson in the NYT video above, but this is a growing trend among NFL analysts that some of us would rather not see; hence, lack of links.)

• The much anticipated HD trailer for the new James Cameron movie Avatar came out last week, to a much better reception than the original trailer from August. One thing that is clear: This profile of Cameron makes him seem like an arrogant asshole.

• The A.V. Club offered it’s thoughts on Chuck Klosterman’s new book, which John S reviewed last month.

• As part of our extensive World Series preview this week, Tim subtly criticized Philadelphia fans (we believe his words were, “Philadelphia fans suck”). Now, The New York Times‘ Mike Tanier–a native of Philly–examines the differences between the fan ideologies in the City of Brotherly Love and the Big Apple.

• Great: Not only are minivans culturally unpopular, but also attractive to clever bears.

• At NPI, we like Joe Posnanski and political philosophy. Here’s Joe Posnanski ON political philosophy. Well, kind of.

• Here at NPI, we’re fans of both fun and theory; that’s why we’re big fans of “The Fun Theory.” Really, regardless of what it espouses, how can you not be a fan of “The Fun Theory”? It’s arguably our favorite named theory since the good old Theory of Everything.

Eating the Dinosaur and Constructing Reality

I’m not really sure why Chuck Klosterman’s new book of essays is called Eating the Dinosaur. The name sounds cool, but it doesn’t really say anything about what the book is about. Unlike Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which had essays on sex, drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, there are (unfortunately) no essays on dinosaurs or their consumption in Eating the Dinosaur; the name instead comes from an essay on time-travel, in which Klosterman declares that eating a dinosaur is the only ethical reason he can conceive of to travel back in time.

Why does this matter?

Well, it’s always hard to describe what Klosterman writes about. On the first page of my copy (which says “advance uncorrected proof” on the cover,* so who knows if it’ll be on yours) is a (probably) fabricated interview with an unnamed source who describes the book as having “quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don’t laugh when they’re inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women.” These kinds of things seem somewhat frivolous and unconnected, particularly when they are presented this way.

*I’m a pretty big deal.