August 2012

On fantasy football, losing a contest, and an entirely appropriate last line

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So my entry wasn't picked as a finalist in the Grantland fantasy columnist competition. Which, on the one hand: No writing time-intensive weekly previews and reviews for free all season. On the other hand: No getting to write about fantasy football for lots and lots of people. So, yay and boo or whatever.

Anyway, since I spent some time on this silly piece, I figured I'd post it here. Y'know, for my thousands of readers. (Even though for all I know it's the intellectual property of the Disney/ESPN Industrial Complex despite the fact that they didn't choose to use it; there was a LOT of fine print in those contest rules, mostly along the lines of "ALL YOUR WORD ARE BELONG TO US AND WE WILL NOT PAY YOU.")... »Read more »

The kerfuffle over criticism

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The literary world is going nuts these days over how we respond to other writers. We're too mean. We're too nice. We respond to writers' Twitter personae instead of their work. We're jealous of their success. We're marketing for friends so they'll market for us in return.

And so on.

The latest hullabaloo is over William Giraldi's piledriver of Alix Ohlin in today's New York Times Book Review. (It's online here.)... »Read more »

Four movies I saw this summer

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The Dark Knight Rises (A-): Saw this twice. Enjoyed it more the second time, oddly. Guess I got all of my nitpicks out of the way on the first viewing. I do have some nits to pick, but I do love the Batman. Can't help it.

The Avengers (B+): Hey, this is the Marvel-verse movie I've been waiting for. Funny, action-packed, entertaining. Yeehaw. ... »Read more »