March 2009
27 posts
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“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.
“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.
“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”
” —Anyone else disturbed that Woody Allen just wrote “O.M.G.”?
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“And I’d like to give a shout out to both of them, especially Erin,” Illinois’ backup big man said Wednesday.”I’d rather have those two in my corner than any of the other guys who picked against us.”
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— Illinois junior forward Dominque Keller has it all in perspective: He only cares that President Obama and Erin Andrews picked the Illini to win tonight. That’s all I’d care about too.
Kind of love, by the way, that a backup forward is giving shoutouts to the President. I’m sure he appreciates it, Dominque!
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When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
” —Clay Shirky is a lot smarter than you and I are. I still blame Denton!
Fake Rick Reilly Is Back →
twitter.com
Whew. Those were a rough few days without it.
“Sears Tower is no more. The 110-story Chicago giant, the nation’s tallest building, will be renamed Willis Tower under a leasing deal. The New York-based owners signed a lease with Willis Group Holdings, a London-based insurance broker, for 140,000 square feet.”
—Yes. They’re renaming the Sears Tower. I’m sure I’ll call it Sears Tower the rest of my life anyway, sounding a little bit more old fogey each time I say it, each year that goes by.
“The universities that participate in these sports at the highest levels have *already* turned themselves into entertainment corporations. The difference between them and other entertainment corporations is that they’ve formed a cartel that bans them from paying their workforces. And they’re backed up by additional cartels—the NBA and the NFL—that make it virtually impossible to ever be compensated for your work unless you agree to an apprenticeship period during which you work for free on behalf of an entertainment subsidiary of an American college. … I’m consistently shocked that this setup is even deemed legal.”
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Matthew Yglesias, CLEARLY NOT A SPORTS REPORTER, points out the madness of universities not paying their athletes. Remember: Not a single penny from any of the advertisers you’ll be watching over … and over … and over … during the NCAA Tournament is going to go to the people actually providing the entertainment. It’s unfathomable that the illusion of College Athletics Being About The Love Of The Game continues to exist.
Other than all that, Go Illini, of course.
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For the past month or so, your editor at large took it upon himself to create the “Rick Rielly” Twitter feed. Our goal: to test the outermost limits of obvious punnage, dental humor, old lame catchphrases, and stories about snowshoe racing champions who have no legs.
Some might say this was a mean-spirited attempt to rip on Rick Reilly and shed light on his obvious shortcomings. Well, it was. BUT DAMMIT, THAT WAS WHAT MADE IT FUN. So imagine my dismay when I found this message waiting for me from Twitter today:
This account is currently suspended and is being investigated due to strange activity. If we have suspended your account mistakenly, please let us know. See Suspended Accounts for more information.
” —The great Drew Magary laments Twitter’s savage destruction of his brilliant Fake Rick Reilly Twitter feed.