AT LAST IT IS HERE: the weekend that Jay-Z destroys downtown Brooklyn, with three nights of sold out performances at the “Barclays Center.” How will this go? Who knows. But there is much more to do. All our favorite events are handily listed here. (PS Look how pretty the collected Minus Times is!)

by Bryan Menegus

The iPhone5 was released six days ago. Did you get one? Did you make a video about it? These are some of the people that did both of those things.

Bryan Menegus is, unfortunately, a writer and comedian. He blogs here and occasionally tweets here.

★ Unstable hour to hour or place to place. The clouds that had muted the morning light over Manhattan thinned out over the Jersey marshes. By Edison, the station platform railings were gleaming. The sky before Princeton Junction was blurrily ridged with brightness and shadow, like an unconvincing projection behind actors in an old movie. Then came blue sky and warm air. At a gas station, out the open side window, the blue and white ended abruptly at a formless sheet of gray, dangling like a torn retina. At night, back in the city, a quick subway ride led from coolness in the West 60s to a stifling SoHo. People walked with furled, unused umbrellas at their sides, in that characteristic dry-umbrella grip, faithful yet alienated.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Seeing Kanye

Along the Juniata, the gray stones,
gray squares in the grass,
keep the hills from the road, keep them
where they are.

When we pass the stones,
like the Earth’s stitches,
I know we’re about to see a rock face
following a bend in the road,
where the strata bends like sound waves.

It’s clear God is below the Earth, not above — 
his head, giant frame for the planet — 
and he makes a sound that makes the Earth.

But first I thought of Kanye’s head
singing, singing, singing into that rock.

Sarah Blake lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and son. Her Kanye West poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere.

After that: speechless. But there are more poems here, in The Poetry Section’s archives, when you’re ready. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

At Baltimore -12 Cleveland

Browns have a chance if
all the Ravens players get
themselves arrested. PICK: BROWNS

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

New England -4 At Buffalo

Last time the Pats lost
three games straight Massasoit
was the quarterback. PICK: PATS

At Detroit -5 Minnesota

Lions’ coach’s weird
plan to lose in overtime
last week worked out great. PICK: LIONS

At Atlanta -7 Carolina

Atlanta’s in first!
They also take an early
lead in DUIs. PICK: FALCONS

San Francisco -4 At NY Jets

Jets without Revis
aren’t much to write home about.
Let Tim Tebow ref! PICK: 49ers

San Diego -1 At Kansas City

The Chargers’ bad loss
last week reminds us that their
coach is terrible. PICK: CHARGERS

At Houston -12 Tennessee

Arian Foster
has become a true Vegan.
Titans’ D meat-free! PICK: TEXANS

Seattle -2.5 At St. Louis

After stealing the
game Monday night the Seahawks
might rob a few banks. PICK: SEAHAWKS

At Arizona -5.5 Miami

Not to jinx them but
the Cardinals look like the best
team in the league. PICK: CARDS

At Denver -6.5 Oakland

In the Mile High Air,
Janikowski makes field goals
from the parking lot. PICK: RAIDERS

Cincinnati -2.5 At Jacksonville

Fans might want to bring
that new J.K. Rowling book
to all Jags’ home games. PICK: BENGALS

At Green Bay -7.5 New Orleans

Wouldn’t want to be
a Foot Locker employee
In Green Bay this week. PICK: PACKERS

At Tampa Bay -2.5 Washington

RG3 is great
but the rest of the Redskins
are total horseshit. PICK: Buccaneers

At Philadelphia -1.5 NY Giants

The Giants average
four mystifying losses
during each season. PICK: EAGLES

Monday, October 1

At Dallas -3.5 Chicago

Hope you like defense!
Neither of these offenses
knows how to shoot straight. PICK: BEARS

Last week’s Haiku Picks went 5–11. That is grim. For the season that’s 20–27–1. Rally underpants time!

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

“Last year, the 30-year-old Adam Greenberg set out to get out of the Cup of Coffee club once and for all. Trying to reclaim the skill set that once allowed him to play the sport at its highest level, he took hacks with the Bridgeport Bluefish, an independent team in Connecticut full of former top prospects and those no longer worth the farm club roster space. ‘It’s a whole bunch of guys with similar stories,’ Greenberg told me. ‘And we’re all in this league, trying to get out.’”

Back in May, we wrote about the 974 baseball players who’ve had only one major league game in their careers. Subtract one! Mr. Greenberg, whose lone Major League at bat involved getting beaned in the back of the head by a 92-mph baseball, has gotten out — sort of. He’s been signed to the Miami Marlins for a one-day contract to play against the Mets. He’ll donate his pay to “the Sports Legacy Institute, a group that furthers the study of the effects of brain trauma in athletes and others.”

Meticulously Documenting Their Binge Drinking And Incessantly Checking Facebook Has Apparently Made College Students Smarter

Early during my freshman year of college, in 1989, I was sitting in the student center when a reporter from the school paper walked up and asked me whether I would be interested in talking to her for an article she was working on about the social life on campus. I made the mistake of agreeing, on record. Her story was about the dangers of underage drinking, and what might be done about the problem. One of my own roommates had spent a recent night in the hospital, having his stomach pumped to avoid alcohol poisoning. But I used the opportunity to mount an attack on the school’s policy of disallowing kegs inside dorm rooms. I talked about freedom and trust and how unfair it was that we 18-year-olds could go to war and die for our country but we were not allowed to legally drink — and how the college should let us do whatever we wanted in the privacy of our dorm rooms. I was quoted for a full paragraph of this serious and impassioned argument, and ended on the point that the administration must know that we were going to have kegs in our dorm rooms anyway, and so the policy amounted to something like entrapment. I’m sure I sounded very stupid to any real adult who might have read the article. I was fine with how it looked in print when I saw it, but within a few years, I was embarrassed.

Apparently, college kids have gotten smarter.

As many of the students quoted in the extremely unflattering account of campus life in today’s Times were savvy enough to offer fake names while they let a 38-year-old reporter sit in on their Herculean drinking sessions and record the sadness of young experience that “didn’t happen” unless it’s photographed and uploaded to Facebook, only to be painstakingly untagged the hung-over next morning. So that only people who know you already can see what a drunken schmuck you are.

Not all of them, though.

There’s been no disavowal from Cornell seniors Mike McLaughlin and Peter Brogan, who really take it between the eyes when Rubin ends her story with them at one o’clock in the morning at an eatery called Collegetown Bagels.

Mr. McLaughlin downed two bagel sandwiches and flipped back and forth between Facebook updates and texts, looking for hookup contenders. Mr. Brogan (who would like the record to reflect, especially for his parents, that he has a job after graduation) sipped a pint glass of sangria left by a previous patron and shot down prospects. “Don’t do that,” he said to Mr. McLaughlin, referring to one woman. “She likes you.”

“Come on, let’s go smoke cigars and play drunken Madden,” Mr. Brogan said, moving his thumbs to mime an Xbox controller. Mr. McLaughlin’s phone lit up and he jumped, but alas, it was only a Facebook status update.

Congratulations to Pete on the job offer. And the free sangria. But bros, come on. When will you learn? Do not talk to journalists!

“Successful brand actors tend to rave about their time playing the face of a brand. Letting go is another story. For most artists, achieving a huge commercial success, be it a hit song or movie or novel, guarantees another shot at stardom; the opposite is true for most brand actors. Once you’re the face of one major product, no other major product wants you.”
 — I enjoyed this piece about the life of the successful commercial spokescharacter. Maybe print it out for your commute.

The National Book Foundations “5 Under 35” awards this year went to the following diverse (and very attractive! And actually also very talented! Love that Jennifer DuBois! Would read the rest of them!) crew of writers:

• one with an MFA from Iowa;
• another with an MFA from Iowa;
• one with an MFA from the New School;
• oh also here’s one with an MFA from Iowa;
• one with an MFA from Ohio State University.

The prize carries a $1000 award, which I’m sure the writers feel nicely offsets the out-of-state, pre-teaching cost of $41,512 per year of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Help a young person, go buy a book today!

Have you eaten yet? It should probably be a factor in whether you decide to click on this compendium of dumplings from around the world, because once you do I have a pretty good idea of what your next meal will be.