Monday Medley

What we read while winning Best New Artist at the Grammys…

• One of NPI’s favorite shows of all-time, Friday Night Lights, came to an end last week. And while we haven’t completely caught up to its DirecTV run, we enjoyed the critical nostalgia about the greatest sports-centric television series of all-time (narrowly passing Hang Time). Alan Sepinwall, as usual, had a great breakdown of the series’ best moments (he even helpfully separated the ones containing spoilers), as well as an interview with showrunner Jason Katims and not one but TWO retrospective podcasts (including one with Bill Simmons).

• Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo adroitly and aptly addresses AOL’s acquisition of HuffPo.

• Speaking of SEO, we’re behind anyone who goes after Bleacher Report, even if they’re Phillies’ fans.

• In baseball news, the Albert Pujols Countdown is quickly approaching zero, as Will Leitch panics. And while we’re usually a fan of Baseball Prospectus, even we think this is nerdy…

• The New Yorker offers a fascinating look at Scientology through the lens of Paul Haggis’ split from the church. And, with eerily coincidental timing, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Scientology movie got funding on the same week.

• As Jeopardy! gears for Watson (TONIGHT!!!), a breakdown of the most common categories and “questions” (i.e. answers).

• The tickets for LCD Soundsystem’s final show at Madison Square Garden mysteriously vanished, so James Murphy went to his blog to offer a “Fuck You” to scalpers and announce four new dates.

• Can this actually make the NCAA Tournament better?

• It’s going to be tough to get a better win probability graph this season. (Although this one from last year is dear to our heart.) (And this one is just ridiculous.)

• R.I.P. Guitar Hero

Monday Medley

What we read while eating a goddamn snack on Revis Island:

• So what’s the state of political discourse in the week after the tragedy in Tucson? Some want us to tone it down, while others think that’s a silly overreaction. Tom Junod at Esquire and Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone have each offered intriguing thoughts on the debate about debate.

• Less seems to be more in football announcing.

• Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary last week.

• CalTech: In a class by itself? Speaking of intelligence, Jeopardy may have for itself a perpetual winner.

• Only one of us still occasionally puts two spaces after a period. It’s such an editing hassle.

• Roger Ebert’s best documentaries of 2010.

• What was more awkward: Ricky Gervais’ monologue at last night’s Golden Globes, or Bill Murray’s speech to Sofia Coppola at the NBR awards?

• Shake Shack’s different locations are compared by Serious Eats.

• Agree to disagree on this one: SplitSider on why the Arrested Development is a lousy movie AND why that’s OUR fault.

• Jill Lepore dissects America’s relationship with the Constitution.

• We don’t agree with all of their choices over at This Recording (there’s no way DFW is the White Swan), but this is obviously a great game…

• A breakdown of pretty much every funny tweet you’ll ever read.

• It may be in Spanish, but this graphic of The Simpsons‘ demise couldn’t be clearer. And as far as gifs go, they don’t get much better than Homer’s Night Out (h/t on each to Dead Homer Society, as usual).

Monday Medley

What we read while boldly enriching our uranium…

• The highlight magazine story of the week is a no-brainer, with J.R. Moehringer’s GQ glimpse into LeBron James in and around The Decision earned headlines across media platforms. Here’s Moehringer answering questions about his story, here’s GQ compiling some reactions, and here’s Buzz Bissinger angrying up the blood at the magazine (justifiably so, it seems). We, of course, psychoanalyzed LeBron’s Decision weeks ago, when Tim defended it before it happened, John S defended it after it happened, and Tim took issue with one thing LeBron said. (The GQ issue, on the whole, is very good by the way.)

• GQ wasn’t the only magazine bringing its A-game this week. We also enjoyed Sports Illustrated‘s look at the transformation of the running back position from Tim Layden and Joe Posnanski’s profile of all-around good guy, Tony Richardson.

• Speaking of Joe Posnanski, he wondered who is the more valuable Yankee: Jeter or Rivera? NPI has made arguments on behalf of both.

• Color pictures where you wouldn’t expect them: Russia in the early 20th century and Ancient Greek Statues.

• Speaking of the early 20th century, Tyler Cowen directs us to the person who predicted the iPhone then.

• Farhad Manjoo at Slate took some heat for investigating how black people use Twitter, something Choire Sicha at The Awl brought to our attention months ago.

• Speaking of, another one of those “Man, I’m trying real hard to stay off Twitter in order to remain literate” stories, this time from NBA blogger Ryan Corazza. (We don’t mean to be sarcastic; we like these stories.)

• The New Yorker features a great excerpt from Sean Wilentz’s upcoming book about Bob Dylan, as well as an interview with Wilentz himself. Meanwhile, John S resumed his look at Dylan’s career this weekend.

Monday Medley

What we read while frantically revising our brackets…

• So apparently there was some kind of health care reform being debated? That the House passed last night? Did anyone hear about this? Why wasn’t it a bigger deal? Oh, and the Tea Party folks handled it with typical poise and aplomb.

• The pop music world lost a big name  last week, as Alex Chilton died of a heart attack. Known primarily for his work with Big Star–whose first three albums everyone should listen to–Chilton was one of the best pop songwriters of the last 40 years. He was eulogized in all sorts of places, from esteemed music critics to the House of Representatives. Chuck Klosterman’s Twitter may have said it best though.

• Apparently, March Madness is a distraction to students. But how can you study when things like this exist?

• This New York Times Magazine feature on David Simon got us both nostalgic for The Wire and tremendously excited for the April 11 premiere of Treme. Who knew The Bunk went to Juilliard?

• Speaking of NYTM, Ben Zimmer officially took over for William Safire as the “On Language” columnist.

• Rex Ryan got a Tummy Tuck lap-band-surgery and he asked about LaDainian Tomlinson immediately upon being awaken.

• This solar furnace burns things like steel with the sun. It’s quite cool.

• Someone should tell Farhad Manjoo that we were totally on board with this, and then we got a BlackBerry.