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 changing our opinions on the morality of condoms…

• Ron Paul condemned the new airport body-scanners, but TSA insists that they are here to stay. Well, at least we know America’s airports are safe! This also presents an interesting Fourth Amendment (the second best!) question.

• Speaking of law, the New York Times ran a fascinating article that empirically establishes that Sandra Day O’Connor relied on her clerks to write opinions more than any other contemporary justice.

• LeBron James isn’t the only Akronite who hasn’t exactly reaped the benefits yet of taking his talents to South Beach. Michael Kruse delivers an interesting feature on journalist Brian Windhorst, whose career arc has mirrored that of James.

• The New Yorker tries to get some perspective on the recent late night wars by looking back at Dick Cavett. Speaking of NBC, the network unveiled its midseason schedule last week. It got at least one thing right…

• This video only proves what I’ve been saying all along: Soccer sucks.

• In a special for Sports Illustrated, Benjamin Hochman tries to answer a question everyone in Denver has been wondering these last two months: Why did Kenny McKinley choose to die? Hochman references this stunningly introspective and affecting piece by Woody Paige on his own battles with depression.

• It’s always fun when the Brits tackle masculinity.

• Not that NPI wants to feed the media’s obsession with all thing Sarah Palin, but the Times ran a story on her “inner circle.” (We draw the line at any and all links having to do with DWTS.) It recalled, of course, New York‘s previous feature on the Palin brand.

• We’re sure James Frey is none too pleased about this piece on his fiction factory. Meanwhile, this book review is OK by us. Or is that O.K.?

• When will teachers learn that yawns are involuntary?

Monday Medley

What we read while dabbling in witchcraft….

• John S wasn’t the only one to review Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom (obvs); the book has been reviewed positively by Esquire, The Millions, The Guardian, and of course The New York Times (twice!). This in addition to appearing on the cover of Time. Ron Charles gave it a slightly (and I mean slightly) negative review, but that was not enough to curb massive backlash to the novel, and endless discussion of that backlash. Whatevs, NPI still loves him…

• ….but not as much as we love DFW.

• This Matt Taibbi piece is worth reading not only for its compelling pro-union stance, but for its description of Simon Cowell as “appalling American Idol douche-twat Simon Cowell.”

• Kid Cudi (unfortunately) denies the existence of “liquid cocaine,” instead saying, “I’m just fucking rich, and my blow comes in a jar. There was no liquid in it—that shit makes no sense.”

• Speaking of cocaine, possession of which is a crime, white-collar criminals are increasingly being offered a choice of which prison to enter as well as being offered time flexibility.

• Bill James doesn’t often write in free public forums, so when he opines on Slate about Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds, it’s a must-read — even if or especially because his take isn’t too dissimilar from our own John S’s.

• “Girls Kissing Girls: Explaining the Trend” is a mildly intriguing title, but it doesn’t come close to the actual web address for this Time story, which includes “girls-kissing-girls-whats-up-with-that.”

• How to eat a muffin while walking!

Monday Medley

What we read while being snookered by Fox News…

• Bill Murray. Need we say more?

• YES! In fact, GQ’s entire comedy issue is worth checking out, from a writer’s account of the last days of Conan’s Tonight Show to an interview with Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, and Tracy Morgan, and another with some of the funniest directors of the last 30 years.

• Our friends at Dead Homer Society took a nuanced look at “Homer’s Enemy,” a memorable eighth-season episode of The Simpsons that The A.V. Club considers “the beginning of the end” and Sam Downing views as just another dark episode in line with several predecessors in the series.

• Keith Law on Malcom Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw.

• The NY Times has a new snazzy format for its “Room for Debate” feature.  Their recent features on college tenure and Teach for America were both thought provoking.

• Forget the signing of Darko Milicic, the trade for Michael Beasley and the trade of Al Jefferson; the surest sign of Timberwolves’ GM David Kahn’s insanity is that he discerned from this interview that Chris Webber was the one acting as “kind of a schmuck.” On the subject of basketball, we haven’t written a Double Bonus in a while, but we did enjoy this Luke Winn piece on one of the Tournament’s best games and Dana O’Neil’s survey of college coaches.

• Meanwhile, the world of sports journalism was aflutter when Mitch Albom, writer of hack novels and magniloquent prose, won the prestigious Red Smith Award. Writers from the ever-ornery Jason Whitlock and the guys at Deadspin, to even the more reserved likes of Dave Kindred, Charles Pierce, and Joe Posnanski have expressed outrage at this hypocrisy.