Baseball’s Data Breaches
When the Houston Astros were hacked last year—resulting in the publication of internal discussions about potential trades, player performance, and other information that baseball teams prefer to keep...
View ArticleJon Stewart’s Charleston Despair
On Thursday, two men known for their ability to inspire optimism in others seemed to have met the limits of their respective abilities.See the rest of the story at newyorker.comRelated:Iran: A Done...
View ArticleTaylor Swift and Apple: Mad Love
On Sunday morning, Taylor Swift published a blog post—“To Apple, Love Taylor”—in which she explained, “with all due respect,” why she wouldn’t be making her mega-best-selling album “1989” available on...
View ArticleAmerica’s Game
The 2015 Women’s World Cup ended, as far as suspense about the ultimate victor was concerned, in the sixteenth minute of Sunday’s final, when the American Carli Lloyd, who had already scored twice,...
View ArticleSerena Wins—Next Question, Please
Serena Williams won her sixth Wimbledon title on Saturday, defeating the first-time finalist Garbiñe Muguruza in straight sets, 6–4, 6–4. It was, for Williams, a nervous-looking match. Her serve, which...
View ArticleThe Greatest Movie Performance by an Active Professional Basketball Player
Based on the unscientific metric of audience laugh rate during a well-attended Sunday matinee, LeBron James is the funniest person in “Trainwreck,” a movie written by and starring one culture-certified...
View ArticleDonald Trump and Deflategate Were Made for Each Other
On Wednesday, this time because someone asked him to, Donald Trump weighed in once more on the Deflategate scandal, calling the N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s decision to reject an appeal and...
View ArticleTom Cruise: The Good Kind of Crazy
Tom Cruise, risen from the depths of his public-relations disasters of the last decade, seems to be back in full cultural favor. This past week, you could catch him engaging in today’s mass-market...
View ArticleThe Big, Funny, Tragic Life of Chris Farley
Chris Farley, who died in 1997, at the age of thirty-three, from an overdose of opiates and cocaine, was the greatest physical comedian of his generation, a manic cannonball who could appear...
View Article“BoJack Horseman” and the Comedy of Despair
The Netflix animated series “BoJack Horseman” is a comedy about an anthropomorphic talking horse of the same name. BoJack starred in a family sitcom in the eighties and nineties called “Horsin’...
View ArticleTom Brady Wins the Long Game
On Thursday, Judge Richard M. Berman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a ruling vacating the N.F.L.’s four-game suspension of the New England Patriots quarterback...
View ArticleRemember When the Muppets Were Subversive?
At the beginning of August, the foam puppets Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy announced on Twitter that they had broken up. This week, an apparently human source told People that Kermit had a new...
View ArticleGoing All In on “All In”
When Jeb Bush launched his campaign for President, in June, most of the attention paid to his political branding focussed on his folksy logo, which featured his first name alone, in Target red,...
View ArticleSerena and Venus: What’s It Like?
In the days before Tuesday night’s quarter-final match at the U.S. Open between Venus and Serena Williams, and then again in the moments after it, the two competitors were asked many variations of the...
View ArticleRisin’ Up: Kim Davis and “Eye of the Tiger”
It looked like some fever dream of American evangelicalism: Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, onstage at a rally held in her honor...
View ArticleThe Presidential Campaign and the New Late-Night Wars
On Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton went on the “The Tonight Show” to talk about, well, mostly Donald Trump. She first appeared in a skit in which the host, Jimmy Fallon, dressed as Trump, called her...
View ArticleHaters Gonna Hate: Listening to Ryan Adams’s “1989”
In August, the prolific singer-songwriter Ryan Adams began recording cover versions of the songs from Taylor Swift’s album “1989” during night sessions at his studio in Los Angeles. He shared short...
View ArticleGetting the James Bond Song Right
This past Friday, the twenty-three-year-old British singer Sam Smith, noting that he had been “dreaming of this moment for a long, long time,” released the song “Writing’s on the Wall,” which will play...
View Article“Star Wars”: Just Let It In
Last night, during halftime of a forgettable “Monday Night Football” game between the Eagles and Giants, the ESPN announcer Mike Tirico said, “For many of you, I know, this is a moment you will never...
View ArticleHas Chris Stapleton Cracked the Country Code?
The big news before Wednesday night’s Country Music Association Awards show, in Nashville, was that Justin Timberlake, a son of Memphis, would be dipping a toe into country music, in a live duet with...
View ArticleUnderstanding Obama Through Basketball
Last month, on the opening night of the N.B.A. season, President Barack Obama was in Chicago to watch his favorite team, the Bulls, play LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. During the second...
View ArticleDavid Ortiz Begins His Last Slow Trot
Today, on his fortieth birthday, David Ortiz announced that next season, his twentieth in the majors, will be his last. His retirement tour could, with a little luck, stretch nearly a full calendar...
View ArticleWhat Would the Father of American Football Make of the Modern Game?
The young men of the 1879 Yale University varsity football team look like an eager and capable bunch, but they don’t look much like football players, at least not how we know them today. Dressed in...
View ArticleBaseball Cards for the Photography Set
When you think of the photographer Ansel Adams, you might imagine majestic scenes from Yosemite or the Tetons, conveyed in glorious, high-contrast black-and white. You’re less likely to picture the...
View ArticleBill Murray’s Little Christmas Miracle
In the first moments of “A Very Murray Christmas”—which begins streaming on Netflix today, just in time to accompany your tree trimming—Bill Murray stands at a window in a hotel room, his back to the...
View ArticleTrump: The Man, the Meme
In the same week that Donald Trump’s nationwide support from likely Republican voters reached its highest levels yet, the G.O.P. front-runner was compared to Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Lord...
View ArticleThe Best Eleven Minutes in Sports in 2015
An average American football game takes about three and a half hours, but after you cut out all the referee huddles, official reviews, timeouts, injury stoppages, commercials, booth chatter, and...
View Article“Concussion” Makes a Christian Argument Against Football
Last January, after the Seattle Seahawks staged an improbable comeback to beat the Green Bay Packers in the N.F.C. Championship Game, the Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson told the football writer...
View ArticleThe Image of Netflix as a Content Utopia
On Wednesday, the Verge, citing comments made by the Netflix chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, reported that the Adam Sandler gross-out comedy Western “The...
View ArticleThe Unforgettable Villainy of Alan Rickman in “Die Hard”
Alan Rickman, who died on Thursday, at the age of sixty-nine, was a classically trained actor who did time in the Royal Shakespeare Company and made his name in modern theatrical productions, notably...
View ArticleNo Clowning Around
The new series “Baskets,” starring Zach Galifianakis and produced by Louis C.K., which premières on FX this Thursday, is full of things that you don’t see much of on television these days. Its...
View Article“Horace and Pete” Is Louis C.K.’s Most Audacious Independent Creation Yet
On Saturday morning, just after ten o’clock, while the lazy or childless among us were still futzing about for coffee in our kitchens, the comedy auteur Louis C.K. sent an e-mail to his list of...
View ArticleSuper Bowl Commercials: The Best and Worst of 2016
There’s a limit to how much anyone ought to expect from television commercials, and to how upset one should get when they fail to impress, but, at a cost of roughly five million dollars per thirty...
View ArticleDonald Trump Is Impervious to Comedy
On Tuesday night, Donald Trump gave the first victory speech of his short life in politics. Sounding like he’d won a Golden Globe rather than the New Hampshire Republican primary, he began by thanking...
View ArticleSwipe Left: “Love” and the Unromantic Comedy
In the fourth episode of “Love,” a darkly funny, pleasantly shambling romantic-comedy series now streaming on Netflix, the male protagonist, Gus, played by the show’s co-creator Paul Rust, is hiding...
View Article“House of Cards” Season 4 Is Less Vulgar Than Real Politics
“House of Cards,” in each of its first three seasons, served as darkly alluring counterprogramming, for politicians and regular viewers alike, to whatever political reality show it happened to be up...
View ArticleA Garry Shandling Photograph That Closes the Book on a Late-Night Era
Of all the images and videos that have resurfaced in the days of mourning following the death of Garry Shandling, one particular photograph stands out for me. It was taken in 1988, on the set of the...
View ArticleWas “Horace and Pete” Even Television?
The sorrowful bit of music that plays at the end of each “Horace and Pete” episode, written for the Web series by Paul Simon, begins with a little dark humor: “Hell no,” Simon sings, “I can’t complain...
View Article“Game 7, 1986” and the Moments After the Moment That Everyone Remembers
When considering the unfortunate underperformers of the 1986 World Series, between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox, the pitcher Ron Darling probably does not come to mind.See the rest of the...
View ArticleCurt Schilling, Internet Embarrassment
Curt Schilling crossed over from star pitcher to Boston folk hero on the night of October 19, 2004, when he started Game Six of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees with...
View Article“Lonely and Horny” and Little Comedy
In a recent essay for the Times, the critic James Poniewozik observes that individual episodes of many so-called prestige television shows are getting longer. Thanks to the diversity of platforms on...
View ArticleThe Towering Narcissism of Jerry Maguire
Remember Jerry Maguire? The character, a sports agent played by Tom Cruise in the Cameron Crowe movie of the same name, became a kind of white-collar superhero when he stood in front of his entire...
View ArticleThe Underside of the N.F.L.-Draft Hacking Scandal
On Thursday night, a twenty-one-year-old named Laremy Tunsil was expected to be the first offensive lineman selected at the annual N.F.L. rookie draft, in Chicago. Tunsil had been a star at the...
View ArticleHow Air Jordan Became Crying Jordan
In 1991, Gatorade released its first commercial starring Michael Jordan. In the minute-long ad, shots of Jordan on the basketball court are spliced with those of kids imitating his signature moves,...
View ArticlePostscript: Guy Clark, 1941-2016
A good place to begin remembering the life of Guy Clark, the singer and songwriter, who died on Tuesday, at the age of seventy-four, is “Heartworn Highways,” a documentary directed by James Szalapski...
View ArticleMuhammad Ali at Fighter’s Heaven
In August, 1974, as Muhammad Ali was preparing to face George Foreman for the heavyweight title, in Zaire, the photographer Peter Angelo Simon visited Fighter’s Heaven, Ali’s training compound in the...
View ArticleThe Unlikelihood of Rooting for LeBron James
What did it take for LeBron James, a man who is so blessed with the physical and mental gifts for playing basketball that he was nicknamed the Chosen One as a teen-ager, to finally become an underdog?...
View ArticleBill Simmons Finally Looks Good on Television
The first episode of the sportswriter Bill Simmons’s new weekly half-hour talk show, “Any Given Wednesday,” on HBO, has so far been discussed, and most likely will be remembered, for the appearance of...
View ArticleTim Duncan’s Parting Bank Shot
The best basketball player of his generation played his final game in the N.B.A. this year. But that player was not Kobe Bryant, of the Los Angeles Lakers, who spent the season on a carefully...
View ArticleStephen Colbert’s Joyful Return to Political Comedy
During this election cycle, it has often felt as though the country’s politically inclined late-night talk-show hosts have been sitting in the wrong chairs, or else sadly absent altogether. Sure, John...
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