Further proof that William Faulkner can write about anything, as if we needed it. Remember the words of Moe Szyslak: “William Faulkner can write an exhaust pipe gag that would really make you think.” Our favorite sentence from this Faulkner Sports Illustrated piece from 1955? ”But [the ice] looked not expectant but resigned, like the mirror simulating ice in the Christmas store window, not before the miniature fir trees and reindeer and cosy lamplit cottage were arranged upon it, but after they had been dismantled and cleared away.”
We are far from the first ones on this, but sometimes, taking two things that independently aren’t funny, like say, Kanye West tweets and New Yorker cartoons, and putting them together equals comic gold.
Two recent profiles of runners going in opposite directions: Esquire on Usain Bolt, and The New York Times Magazine on Marion Jones. Luke Dittrich’s piece on Bolt, by the way, acts as a kind of foil to the sprinter’s style, starting out very strongly before fading a little, instead of vice versa.
Bad sports columns are written all the time, which is why we don’t often link to them. But sometimes, a really bad one catches our eye, like Bill Rhoden’s idea that LeBron James can only exceed Michael Jordan by–get this–playing for him on the Bobcats.
Did Stephen Ambrose, the man who made a career writing about Dwight Eisenhower, fabricate nearly all of his correspondence with his main subject? (You can read that version from The New Yorker, or get Garrison Keillor’s from the Kansas City Star, whose first sentence includes the adjectives “green” and “lush” and talks about “robins chittering” and spring blossoming and the Battle of Dunbar in 1296 and all, for no other reason than to remind you, “Oh, right. Garrison Keillor wrote this.”)
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.)
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.
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.
