You wanted it. You were willing to give up BBC dramas for it. Now it’s time to readjust to the working life. Welcome back.
End Zone
Super Bowl, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bill Belichick
Like a lot of people this Sunday, I’ll be choosing sides in a contest whose outcome is going to be disappointing. The team I’m rooting for (the 2007 Green Bay Packers) can’t win. This is a replay of one of my least favorite Super Bowls in recent memory, one which offended me so thoroughly the first time around, I actually refused to watch it. So to have any fun, I have to pick a side. I have to get emotionally invested. When I watch a football game, I have to mean it.
TMN vs. Explodingdog
Have Faith in Duck
Today is the final installment in our series with Explodingdog. Over two months, Sam published a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Today’s is a special double-feature.
Opinions
Enjoy the Silence
Just because no one uses payphones doesn’t mean the phone booth needs to go the way of the dodo. One man’s plea for preserving society’s greatest unused invention.
End Zone
Season Retrospective
I don’t mean to sound bitter, but I am. Not just because the Packers aren’t going back to the Super Bowl. Not just because I called both Conference Championships wrong last week. No, my bitterness is more complex, and of longer standing. For as we look past the Pro Bowl to the Super Bowl, I see a less-than-thrilling finale to what started out as an odd, exciting season in the NFL.
This Week
As I Unexpected
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. While “interesting” is diluted and obscured to the point of redundancy, “epic” continues to diminish in stature. Meanwhile, “unexpected” lurks in quiet inescapability. Amid all the hyperbole, it was the unexpected that caused us to pause for thought this week.
Continue ReadingLiberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and the socially destructive force of increasing inequality.
Witch Hunt
The Devil’s Trumpet
History is an imperfect science—the truth often weaves within nuance and mystery. For those playing the role of historian, the trick is knowing what you’re looking for.
TMN vs. Explodingdog
Just Keep Waiting…
Today is the seventh installment in our series with Explodingdog. Sam is publishing a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Leave your ideas for next week’s installment in the comments.
Letters From Tel Aviv
Herbivore, Carnivore, Omnivore
A grocery visit or dinner out in Israel can sometimes leave your stomach churning, but not for the reasons you might think.
Gallery
The Four Temperaments
In Thomas Woodruff’s paintings, Hippocrates’s Four Humors afflict beasties, batterflies, and tigers on tender, spooky landscapes.
End Zone
Conference Championships
It could have been the ghost of Brett Favre. Or Aaron Rodgers’s two-week vacation. Maybe those State Farm “discount double-check” commercials produce bad karma in addition to vague irritation. Or maybe this girl is right, and the Packers would have won if only her friend hadn’t talked her into putting sparkles on her green nail polish.
This Week
Soft Power Triumphs Softly
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week, despite all that Wikipedia has achieved, quantity and brute force wasn’t fairing well, with soft power and quality winning the long war.
China loves soccer, but its complete lack of ability has a root cause: the system:
Continue ReadingIn a country so proud of its global stature, football is a painful national joke. Perhaps because Chinese fans love the sport madly and want desperately for their nation to succeed at it, football is the common reference point by which people understand and measure failure.
A Sort of Homecoming
Don’t Leave Me
World War II had veteran parades. Vietnam War vets were often ignored, if not shunned. For the current generation of war-weary Americans, solace comes on YouTube.
TMN vs. Explodingdog
I’ve Been Wrong Before
Today is the sixth installment in our series with Explodingdog. Sam is publishing a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Leave your ideas for next week’s installment in the comments.
Birnbaum V.
Russell Banks
Our man in Boston sits down for the sixth time with Russell Banks to discuss his latest novel, the movie business, Mitt Romney, the emigration of investigative journalists, and why it’s wise to wait until your 70’s before writing about obsessive love.
This Week
Finding One’s Self, Losing One’s Self
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week, when we weren’t trying to find ourselves, we were just getting lost; psychologists were having a field day. The words of Kevin Fanning came to mind, “Sometimes you try to be in the moment, but the moment sucks, and you think back to another moment, which also sucked, but had a twist ending.”
Continue ReadingDepending on whom you ask, the notion that some cultures have their own ways of going crazy is either the ultimate in cultural sensitivity or the ultimate in Western condescension.
End Zone
Division Weekend
Football fans learned some important lessons this weekend; first among them: Ben Roethlisberger cannot pull off a fedora. His post-game presser outfit—whether an homage to Swingers or an attempt to bring (consensual) sexy back—only added insult to an already deeply injured Steeler Nation.
The Tournament of Books
Here Comes the Rooster
It is time to announce the contestants, judges, and brackets for the original, one-and-only, full-combat, oddly-predictive-of-the-Pulitzer-Prize, eighth annual TMN Tournament of Books, coming March 2012, presented by Field Notes.
The Brakes
Beauty
The most irritating thing cyclists do? Wear their helmets indoors, of course. A few years ago I wrote about the folks who shopped for groceries with their helmets on (“What, you’re going to crash into the tomatoes?!”). A friend who had read my essay came over for dinner one evening and began to chop vegetables at our sink, with his helmet on. Ha ha. I was uncorking a bottle of wine, so I wadded up the metal foil top and threw it at my friend’s head/helmet.