Bill Simmons' new sports and culture shop Grantland.com (Redsmith.com was already taken) is officially in "previews," so you can read this long and worthy piece by Awl pal Katie Baker. It is about the New York Knicks, to be sure, but like everything written by Awl pal Katie Baker, it is about so much more. Like sports. Print and save!
Awl pal Katie Baker-Bakes tells all about her scandalous Internet past.
"Has there ever been a better moment for tween girls?" asked Ada Calhoun in the L.A. Times last week, pointing to the cultural ascendancy of Disney and Nickelodeon robots Hannah Montana, Taylor Swift, iCarly and Selena Gomez. Then fans of American Idol watched as an army of twexters voted for dreamy over Didi. ("America is a teenage girl," lamented TV blogger Richard Lawson.) So strong is the spirit of this young generation that even the women of my own just-older cohort have sought its approval, offering up recycled heirlooms from our own childhoods like so many olive branches. Just hitting bookstores is The Summer Before, [...]
"These Olympics have just been a complete disaster," said a coworker the other day with the sort of learned gravitas that can only be acquired via a force-fed nightly diet of Chris Collinsworth's zip-up-necked sweaters (stitched, per the suddenly saucy Wall Street Journal, "entirely out of Phil Simms's hair.")
I don't want to put a damper on anyone's weekend, but I feel like I should give you unsuspecting folks a warning that an aggregate span of 22 minutes this Sunday is going to have a potentially painful and fairly unavoidable influence on your lives for the following two weeks-which is the length of time that the media has to drunk-drive you down the Road to the Super Bowl.
Why is nobody excited for the Olympics? The Winter Games are less than three months away, but I haven't heard a single elevator wisecrack about curling yet. This worries me. I suspect that many Americans are still reeling from the spectacle of watching over 15,000 Chinese nationals bang drums in perfect sync during the 2008 Opening Ceremonies in Beijing. As threatening geo-military shows of force go, that was far more terrifying than anything Kim Jong-Il has ever done. Each of those drums will be an American head if you don't fix the dollar stat is what these stone-faced proletariats were saying to me that night. Also: we will see your [...]
Congratulations to Awl pal Katie Baker, who will be doing her sportswriting thing at the new shop Bill Simmons is setting up at ESPN. We're very excited about this.
Awl pal Katie Baker-Bakes looks at "a sports scandal so bleak and bizarre that it makes the Tonya Harding affair seem like a polite misunderstanding." It's pretty disturbing.
AWL WEEKEND BLOGGING ALERT! During this evening's presentation of Hollywood's salute to Hollywood, a couple of frequent Awl contributors-specifically Olympics columnist Katie Baker-Bakes (who may very well be preemptively irritated by the whole thing) and frequent moviegoer (and food-eater) David "Awl Publisher David Cho" Cho-will be on hand to discuss the proceedings. Please do stop by. I may even make an appearance myself. Anyway, let's say 7:30 or so? Excellent! See you then.
Awl contributor Katie Baker-Bakes indulges in her love of Troop Beverly Hills and learns that you can, in fact, go home again.
"In the United States," begins something that reads like a high school essay, "the 1960s were a time of revolution, of young people challenging authority and demanding change." It was during that decade, the writer goes on to note, that "social change and freedom of expression led to new and exciting…
………skiing techniques."
(Cripes, is there anything the Boomers aren't taking credit for?)
That illuminating glimpse into modern history is part of the official Olympics website's description of freestyle skiing, the umbrella category that comprises aerials, moguls and the Games' newest "medal discipline": ski cross.
This Thursday you probably want to head over to (Le) Poisson Rouge for the fifth anniversary of the Varsity Letters reading series, which will feature, among others, Awl pals Katie Baker, Ben Cohen, Dan Shanoff and Will Leitch. Good times.
"But if LeBron and his minions can prevent the news from leaking, ESPN tomorrow night is going to be insanely compelling television, whether you're sick of this or not! ADMIT IT. It's so much more fun than it would be if some random reporter broke the news on like, SI.com! That it's an hour long is ridonk, sure, but that's how TV works: stringing you along before delivering the debilitating and/or delicious blow. Didn't anyone ever watch Joe Millionaire?"
South Korean darling Kim Yu-na was an absolute stunner last night in the ladies free skate, shattering her own world record score and twirling her way to the gold. Aerial ski jumper Jeret Peterson-known assonantly as "Speedy"-landed a "Cirque du Soleil on skis" move called the Hurricane that he had not successfully stuck in competition since 2007; he won a silver. The Canadian women's hockey team boozily Owned The Podium (and almost Drove The Zamboni) after winning their third Olympic gold. And still, all I could think about as I lounged on the couch and let the NBC broadcast team play cat's cradle with my heartstrings [...]
At first I was fairly heated up about the Sports Illustrated cover shot of shredding sensation Lindsey Vonn. Absurd from every angle-and boy, are there ever angles-it's got her all glammed up in a pretty power princess kind of way, all glossy hair and painted lips. You have to squint your eyes toward the base of her Red Bull-endorsed headthing to see, but I'm pretty sure she's wearing diamond hoop earrings. All that aside, there's other bait: consider, as someone pointed out, the unfortunate juxtaposition of a certain set of letters.
But now I'm pretty much over it. For the real crime, as it turns out, is the blandest [...]
I can't say for certain, but there is an excellent chance I have been, behind my back, erroneously labeled a lacrosstitute.
I say "lacrosstitute" because that is the epithet of choice for a girl in a sundress who, for whatever reason, chooses of her own free will to consort with a bunch of louche loudmouths in Hawaiian print board shorts and mesh practice pinnies that announce "SUNS OUT, GUNS OUT" and cover neither chest hair nor beer guts (both being marks of proud distinction among their bearers).
