Monday Medley

What we read while the world ended and started up again…

• Jerry Seinfeld talks about the state of his life and career. In other stand up comedy news, Tig Notaro talks about how surviving cancer has changed her.

• Is the way to deal with gun violence to go after gun culture and the firearms industry?

• John Branch and The New York Times upped the ante on the digital presentation of stories.

• Even the CIA is worried about how Zero Dark Thirty portrays torture.

• This week in oral histories: The writers behind Fire Joe Morgan sat down to discuss the blog’s inception and evolution.

• Joe Posnanski on redoing the Hall of Fame.

• Why did two South Carolina football alums commit suicide?

• Forget TIME: Nate Silver is Out‘s person of the year.

• David Chase looks back at the series finale of The Sopranos.

• After all these years, we finally know who Gossip Girl is.

• The entertaining Richard Deitsch hands out his sports media awards.

Monday Medley

What we read while deleting our emails from David Petraeus…

• Joe Posnanski tackled last week’s MLB awards, from Rookie of the Year, to Manager of the Year, to the Cy Young, to the polarizing MVP debate, which divided the nation.

• Israel spent the week bombing the Gaza Strip after an escalation in rockets from Hamas, though it’s hard to tell who initiated the fighting. Some say Netanyahu’s motives are political, while others insist he’s simply misguided. Of course, the human toll is tragic as civilians and even the press are caught in the middle. But at least it’s making for some great social media fodder!

• Pete Wells penned the restaurant review of the year.  Language Log uses a review of the review to talk about misnegation.

• How sticky are toilet preferences?

• The incoherence of defending drone strikes.

• Why do teachers quit?

• The Petraeus scandal is having ramifications for the growing surveillance state as people question the legitimacy of the FBI’s intrusion.

• A history of Nintendo controllers.

• Man, this North Carolina academic scandal is getting so ugly, some of those players should start enrolling at Western Oklahoma State College.

• D.T. Max on a new collection of David Foster Wallace nonfiction.

• In case you still felt good about ESPN’s, ahem, journalism…

• Life as a New York Times trend story…

• Why marrying Jerramy Stevens was probably not Hope Solo’s best idea.

Live Blogging 2 Hours of ESPN’s 24 Hours of College Basketball

You may remember that last year NPI brought you live-blog coverage of 22 of the 24-hour ESPN Season Tip-Off Marathon. So why aren’t we being as extensive this year? Chill out, we have things to do! And Tim already brought you a 2010-11 season preview, and a breakdown of the NCAA Vault. What more do you want? But we couldn’t let tonight’s Duke game go by without a live-blog, so Tim and John S will be here to break it down for you.

I wonder what Coach K is telling him...

TIM: Miami (Ohio) probably won’t win the MAC. That’s really what I take away from this game.

JOHN: Final thoughts: Duke looks pretty good, huh?

TIM: Who or what is a Todd Zafirovski?

JOHN: I was more mocking Patrick than Miles’ toughness. And how insulted must Seth Curry be to be in with these scrubs?

TIM: Easy for you to sarcastically mock. Dislocated fingers hurt A LOT, John. A LOT.

JOHN: Mike Patrick after Miles Plumlee’s dislocated finger: “He gets a pass on the two missed free throws. And anything else he wants for that matter.” Man, how entitled is Miles going to be tonight? “I demand the flesh of a virgin! I had a busted finger!”

TIM: Well, I’ve been faithful to the game we’re supposed to be watching. What I did see of the Butler-Louisville game earlier was that the Bulldogs hadn’t established an offensive flow yet. Matt Howard was in foul trouble–what else is new?–and no one beyond Shelvin Mack could do anything. It doesn’t surprise me a lot; Louisville will be a bubble team and Butler had a slowish start last season, as well. They need Howard to be closer to the player he was two years ago if they’re going to be a Final Four contender again.

JOHN: Adamantly opposed. I don’t even understand the logic. Is that supposed to be more intimidating? And how surprised are you that Butler is getting killed by Louisville? Is it possible people were too quick to dismiss Louisville this year?

TIM: I’m upset with the Duke defense, as well. The RedHawks have scored almost a point a minute this half. ALMOST A POINT A MINUTE!

You cool with the lack of a space between Red and Hawks? What’s your feeling on that?

Monday Medley

What we read on our $200 million-per-day Indian vacation…

• The titular mission of one of NPI’s favorite former blogs has finally been accomplished, as ESPN has decided not to bring Joe Morgan back to Sunday Night Baseball (Jon Miller’s gone too, but we’ll miss him). Morgan himself claimed he wasn’t surprised by the move. Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs reprinted a 2005 story he wrote for SF Weekly on Morgan. And, of course, Joe Posnanski offered his thoughts on the farewell.

• Rachel Maddow had an extensive (and interesting) interview with Jon Stewart.

• Could you have solved this Wheel of Fortune puzzle with only one letter? Chris Jones of Esquire explained how Caitlin Burke actually did.

• Why are Publius, Rick Reilly, and Bill Simmons discussed in the same article? Find out!

• How Slate has failed to keep up with the Internet. Meanwhile, Charlotte Magazine takes an in-depth look at the state of the Queen City’s newspaper, the Charlotte Observer.

• The Onion basically sums up all the problems with democracy that John S tried to explain in his long post. Meanwhile, the evidence that democracy doesn’t work keeps on mounting…

• We would try to avoid linking to something as super-specific to our (read: Tim and Josh’s) tastes as an analysis of divisive Mets’ managerial candidate Wally Backman, but Ted Berg’s starts with a David Foster Wallace epigram! As a counterpoint, a study on what we all know: Managers don’t mean much of anything. And, another statistical analysis on the importance of managerial experience.

• Not quite Caden Cotard. Paul DePodesta, now assistant GM for the Mets, explains why his character will not bear his name in the Moneyball movie.

• Manny Pacquiao, Boxing’s Great Hope for Continued Relevance, was dominant again on Saturday night at Cowboys Stadium in beating Antonio Margarito. That reminded us of Andrew Corsello’s April profile of the Philippine for GQ.

Monday Medley

What we read while deciding not to publish our own story about not having sex with Christine O’Donnell…

• As New York baseball fans, we were stunned and saddened by the news of the passing of legendary scorekeeper Bill Shannon. Tim, who was fortunate enough to meet Bill, wrote a brief tribute on his Tumblr. The best tribute, not surprisingly, came from MLB.com’s Marty Noble, with others pouring in from fellow scorer Billy Altman, Wallace Matthews, Ed Coleman, and Tom Boorstein.

• As for some other sports links, David Schoenfield tries to answer who the best postseason pitcher in MLB history is (hint: it wasn’t Cliff Lee even before Game 1). In direct contrast to what Tim McCarver said during Saturday night’s Game 3, here’s statistical backing for using a three-man rotation in the playoffs. And in other counterintuitive statistical analysis, Peter Keating argues that it is possible to give 110 percent.

• Speaking of statistical analysis, the Mets hired sabermetrics-advocate Sandy Alderson as their new General Manager this week. Here is an extensive (and excellent) interview of Alderson back when he was CEO of the Padres. Rumor has it that he’s going to bring along Paul DePodesta to the front office, who was prominent in Moneyball (a book we’ve invoked a few times so far), and has his own blog.

• With Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show just a week away, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Bill Carter’s book about January’s Tonight Show fallout. As usual, Jay Leno and NBC do not come off well. Also from Vanity Fair, a profile of the real Sean Parker, a/k/a Justin Timberlake’s character in The Social Network.

• In the spirit of Halloween, Tim and Josh posted about the best candies. New York City candy shops have some interesting selections. This is a good time to link to Candy Blog, which, you know, is a blog about candy.

• Some pseudo-sociology about the rise and fall of the modern hipster.

• John S wasn’t the only one to take on Malcolm Gladwell’s social media bashing. The Hairpin did it this week, from the perspective of Gladwell.

• We don’t usually link to college newspapers/magazines that we may or may not have used to write for, but Kevin Lincoln’s feature on Mike Posner and what Lincoln calls “the college-white-boy rap phenomenon” in Duke’s Towerview is worth the read.

• We don’t think it should be too hard to interest you in the best cover versions of ’90s TV theme songs. If nothing else, this just made us appreciate the Duck Tales theme all the more.

• We’re against negative campaign ads — unless they reference Billy Madison.

• Speaking of campaigns, here are some of the signs from this weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear.

Monday Medley

What we read while waiting for the first Chilean miner book…

• Speaking of Conan O’Brien, he had an announcement about Andy Richter’s status on his new show this week (as well as some unfortunate news about Max Weinberg). Richter talked about the new show, as well as a guest appearance of his on Will Arnett’s Running Wilde.

• The first BCS standings came out this week, and Don Borst thinks that BCS critics ought to be rooting for Boise State and TCU. Last month John S made the exact opposite argument.

• It’s posts like this that make us love Joe Posnanski (even if we sometimes disagree with him).

• Also in the world of great sports stories, ESPN breaks down the famous Fifth Down play from twenty years ago.

• In the world of not-so-great-but-not-all-that-surprising-sports-stories, a former agent details giving thousands of dollars to college athletes.

• Esquire‘s Scott Raab follows Philip Roth back to Newark, where the prodigious author says, among other things, that “life is one long BP spill.”

• A real-life version of Hans Moleman presents, “Man Getting Hit by Football.” Starring Brett Favre.

• The New York Times Magazine‘s Education Issue was a few weekends ago, but it brought back some memories of Josh and Tim’s Symposium on Handwriting (starting with Josh, on to Tim, back to Josh). One feature on the Livescribe smart pen seemed to suggest handwriting might not be dead while a second on the significance of video games in classrooms includes a teacher saying, “Handwriting? That’s a 20th-century skill.”

• Louis C.K. and Marc Maron break down their lives and careers in a two-part podcast.

• A haunting story about someone who preyed on on the suicidal and may have caused dozens of deaths. At least we know it isn’t T.I.

• Former Simpsons writer Bill Oakley has been sharing some old documents he came across via Twitter, including this early script for “$pringfield,” the first draft of the immortal luncheon between Chalmers and Skinner in “22 Short Films about Springfield” (which Tim has written, shall we say, extensively about), the original story pitch for what became “Two Bad Neighbors,” one of whom was George H.W. Bush, and finally, leftover story ideas and pitches.

• It’s officially been another year since the greatest series ever played…

Why I Hate the Little League World Series

I know we’ve reached a bit of a lull in the sports conversation when preseason NFL games are being broken down into minutiae and ESPN: The Magazine is ranking college football tunnel entrances in its latest issue. There’s a reason we all hate August.

But I didn’t know it had gotten this bad. This 70-hours-of-Little-League-Baseball-on-a-major-sports-network-over-the-course-of-10-days bad. This the-starting-lineups-are-brought-to-you-by-Camp-Rock-2-presented-by-Disney bad.

Can you conceptualize 70 hours of Little League Baseball? That’s seven hours a day! If you’re an American who watches an average amount of television every day, you cannot watch all the Little League World Series action ESPN is jamming down our throats. When it could be airing PTI and a Mariotti-less Around the Horn!

And yes, I can admit it: I hate the Little League World Series.

Monday Medley

What we read while exiting through the evacuation slide….

• NPI-favorite Jonathan Franzen (so what if he’s not as favorite as David Foster Wallace…he’s still good) is getting a lot of positive pub with the impending release of his new novel, Freedom. Franzen received Time cover treatment (the article is only excerpted online…cheap, right?) along with solid reviews from Sam Anderson at New York and Benjamin Alsup at Esquire. Alan Cheuse at NPR was less enthusiastic, if, it seems, unjustifiably so. And The Guardian tries to sum up what it means for the author and The Novel (in a general sense).

• An interesting account of working with George Lucas on Star Wars. Apparently, the Ewoks weren’t always in the cards….

• We love language, we love sports (they are both categories at NPI), so why wouldn’t we love Steve Rushin on language in sports?

• Continuing the sports theme, here’s Jack McCallum on the Dream Team reunion as they go into the Hall of Fame and Dana O’Neil (continuing her own strong summer) on the impact of Ali Farokhmenesh’s shot at Northern Iowa. The highs of both of those sporting events were perhaps countered by the low at Sunday’s PGA Championship, where Dustin Johnson was penalized on the 72nd hole due to a technicality. Golf.com’s roundtable discusses an event that has already been compared ad nauseam to Armando Galarraga’s imperfect perfect game.

• Continuing the language theme, we couldn’t see this story and not think of one of our favorite commercials of yore.

• Joe Posnanski assesses who is the worst everyday player in baseball and analyzes defensive statistics as well.

• Speaking of defense, definitely the legal defense of the week.

In Defense of LeBron and “The Decision”

What ever happened to LeBron James?

Remember old LeBron? You know, Cute, Innocent LeBron? The LeBron who covered up his tattoos when he played on national television for his high school team while appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated? The LeBron who was ruled ineligible because he accepted all those gifts and then allowed to play because the game was supposed to be on TV?

Yeah, where’d that selfless LeBron go?

I am personally offended by this new, egocentric LeBron James. Betrayed, even. I was all set to spend my Thursday night enriching myself with a thorough rereading of The Brothers Karamazov between commercials of a CSI: rerun.

A Disappointing Bee?

So, I know I said that the Spelling Bee never disappoints, but I may have to correct myself. Last night’s spelling bee finals were kind of disappointing, and not just because my pick, Laura Newcombe, was eliminated on a word Dr. Bailey couldn’t even pronounce right. No, there were three things that kept the Bee from being as great as it usually is: