Mad Men’s recently wrapped-up fifth season was possibly its best season yet, and at least its best since season two. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the most ambitious season thus far because it dealt most directly with morality—and was the least preoccupied with subject of happiness.
Most of the time, Mad Men is all about happiness: Is happiness an illusion? Is it ever sustainable? Are the things that make people happy the same? Etc. This can be compelling, but it tends to get self-indulgent and repetitive quickly.
What made Season Five so different, though, was that it took as its starting point the idea that Don Draper, the perpetually self-loathing protagonist, was actually happy. He was finally in a happy marriage; he had a cordial relationship with his ex-wife and he was getting along with his kids; his company was relatively safe, and his relationships with most of his co-workers were good. This was so jarring to some viewers that they seemed intent to find problems where none existed. Every fight with he had with Megan supposedly hinted at the faulty foundation of the marriage—even if the fight was minor and they made up afterwards. People seemed completely unwilling to accept the idea that Don could be happily married and generally content; it was so unlike the Don we were used to. Continue reading »
Joe Posnanski wraps up the national championship game, and Wright Thompson delivers the goods from Augusta. One of the bigger stories emerging from The Masters wasn’t winner Charl Schwartzel but rather the club’s denying access to the locker room to Bergen Record reporter Tara Sullivan because she’s a woman. We don’t often condone the use of “Really?” as a stand-alone reaction, but…really? Sullivan, who anyone in the business knows is a pro’s pro, wrote about the experience here — a “misunderstanding” according to Augusta National, which somewhat famously doesn’t have any female members — while also delivering her regularly scheduled column on Rory McIlroy. You may also remember Sullivan writing about the Ines Sainz scandal with the New York Jets back in the fall.
John S explained why he hates Christmas last year, but it’s all still true:
Today is December 18th, which means we’re a week away from the 25th, the two-month anniversary of Christmas. So now seems as good of a time as any to explain why I hate this “holiday” with a fiery passion.
It probably doesn’t come as much of a shock to you to hear that I hate Christmas: For one, I like hating things that are popular. More substantively, though, Christmas combines two of my least favorite things in the world: religion and consumerism. At Christmas, people are encouraged to buy a bunch of stuff that they don’t need in order to celebrate the birth of a god that doesn’t exist. Continue reading »
The Sporting News lists the 20 smartest professional athletes. Biggest Disappointment? Peyton Manning’s 1030 SAT Score (yes, that is supposed to demonstrate his intelligence).
Way back in October, Tim celebrated the anniversary of Pardon the Interruption by praising the show as a standout among sports debate shows, especially its lead-in Around the Horn. Looks like he’s not alone on either end of that. Daniel Fienberg at HitFix has been counting down his 31 favorite television series of the decade all month (only TV? Slacker), and PTI checked in at No. 14. Meanwhile, Sports Illustratedtook a minor jab at ATH in its review of sports media; this only became noteworthy when none other than William Plaschke took the high road–Twitter–to air his grievances (Festivus-style) against SI.
It’s very difficult to determine which of these lists is the most unbelievable. I’m going with Dan Humphrey’s 10 favorite books of 2009; no non-book critic reads 10 books the year they come out.
Today is December 18th, which means we’re a week away from the 25th, the two-month anniversary of Christmas. So now seems as good of a time as any to explain why I hate this “holiday” with a fiery passion.
It probably doesn’t come as much of a shock to you to hear that I hate Christmas: For one, I like hating things that are popular. More substantively, though, Christmas combines two of my least favorite things in the world: religion and consumerism. At Christmas, people are encouraged to buy a bunch of stuff that they don’t need in order to celebrate the birth of a god that doesn’t exist.
Whether or not you’d like to admit it, it’s hard to deny that Christmas brings out the worst of both of these already-pretty-bad things. Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on Christmas, plenty of it horribly misallocated; advertising and the general holiday spirit inspire a sense of “rewarding yourself” and “remembering others” that can only be done through a commercial transaction.* As for the “religious” element of the holiday, Christmas cloyingly spoon-feeds us sweet and formulaic messages about the value of family and generosity: It translates moral and religious dogma into clichés and after-school specials. Continue reading »
