“[F]or those of us who lived in flyover country in the mid-1980s — far from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, or anywhere else that was happening at the time — associating with a scene required a fair amount of copycatting. Because it was hard to find reliable information about what was really going on out there, we’d pass around records, quote from whatever magazine articles we could find, rent movies like Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline Of Western Civilization and Suburbia, and keep looking for a version of punk that was more authentic than the bandana-clad, purple-haired street toughs in Hollywood action movies.”
 — Soon you will have to explain to kids that this really once was a thing, like only having three channels of television and having to watch a show when it was scheduled or missing it completely.

“As I’ve written elsewhere — and argued, often drunkenly, at cocktail parties — the four friends operated as near-allegorical figures, pegged to contemporary debates about women’s lives, mapped along three overlapping continuums. The first was emotional: Carrie and Charlotte were romantics; Miranda and Samantha were cynics. The second was ideological: Miranda and Carrie were second-wave feminists, who believed in egalitarianism; Charlotte and Samantha were third-wave feminists, focussed on exploiting the power of femininity, from opposing angles. The third concerned sex itself. At first, Miranda and Charlotte were prudes, while Samantha and Carrie were libertines. Unsettlingly, as the show progressed, Carrie began to glide toward caution, away from freedom, out of fear.”

Elvis Costello And The Roots, “Walk Us Uptown”

If this is any indication, the forthcoming collaboration between The Roots and Elvis Costello is probably worth picking up.

We didn’t learn that much from the massive “Economic Impacts of Tax Expenditures” study that gets a big spread in the Times today, except: if you want them to be rich, have your children in Seattle, Salt Lake City or New York City, and don’t have them in Atlanta, Miami or Memphis. But we already knew that.

I know we’re all a little oral historied out but you should still make time for this oral history of Maxwell’s. I mean, if that’s the kind of thing you’d be into.

“Dennis Farina, a Chicago native and police officer who turned to acting, has died at 69 in Arizona, his publicist said today…. Farina was an 18-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, a detective who moonlighted on Chicago theater stages and in small movie roles. In the 1980s he was on the NBC television series “Crime Story.” He became a full-time actor much in demand for feature films (‘Midnight Run,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘Get Shorty,’ ‘Snatch’), TV movies (‘The Case of the Hillside Strangler.’ ‘Empire Falls’) and TV series (‘The In-Laws,’ ‘Buddy Faro’).”

by The Awl

The following are excerpts from every piece in The Classical Magazine’s baseball issue, “The Same Old Game.” You can read “The Same Old Game” a few different ways. The most highly recommended, if you’re an Apple user, is to just get the app: it’s free, and comes with a free issue, then it’s $3.99 for an issue, or $29.99 for a full year of 12 issues. (There are also PDF, Kindle, and .Puig files available DIY style at the same prices. Just get in touch with Pete Beatty at pete@theclassical.org to work out a transaction.)

Why are we doing this? Well, The Classical offered us a piece from the issue. And we thought: well that’d be great and all, but, really? Does letting us publish a thing on the web help people discover your magazine? Maaaaybe it does! But what if we just told people a bit about everything that was in it instead? Like so. And here we are.

Eighth Wonder by Ted Walker

The Astrodome, from its conception and construction through its grand opening, represented the pinnacle of architectural achievement, the height of ambition, and the synthesis of civic innovation, national pride, and economic optimism. The Judge, as the conductor of this mad orchestra, was the movement’s leader, and like a Kennedy of the plains, put his uncommon energy and supernatural drive to use motivating those around him to accomplish feats that nobody had previously dared to imagine.

With the spirit of the space program and Houston’s proud new role as the brains of the operation glimmering from behind his horn-rimmed glasses, the Judge emerged from his office one day and announced to his team and to the city that the Houston baseball team would no longer be called the Colt .45s. In their bold new home, defiant of meteorology and built at a scale never seen on Earth before, the team would be called the Astros.

Six Avant-Garde Plays Featuring Corey Kluber by Carson Cistulli

GROUCHO MARX: I’d like to make a motion.
MODERATOR: Go ahead, Groucho Marx.
GROUCHO MARX: I move that his curveball — that Corey Kluber’s curveball — resembles stop-action footage of two unicorns freaking.
MODERATOR: Okay, noted. Late comic actor Groucho Marx moves that Kluber’s curve resembles slow-motion footage — 
GROUCHO MARX: Stop-action, Mr. Moderator.
MODERATOR: What’s that?
GROUCHO MARX: Stop-action footage, Mr. Moderator.

Go Leafs Go by Sam Riches

Caulfield, at 27, is one of the few players on the team that still has big-league hopes, and a legitimate chance at realizing them. He went 5–0 last season, devastating the league with a two-seam fastball and changeup. He was drafted by the New York Yankees out of the College of Charlestown in 2008, but a few weeks later he walked away from the game to attend a Christian ministry school, stunning his teammates, coaches, and family. He said his love for the game was gone. While sidelined by Tommy John surgery, he began reading the Bible and regularly attending church. He had found religion in an elbow injury.

The Secret History of Sabermetrics by Jack Moore

Batting average makes enough sense on its surface. The batter’s goal is to get a hit, therefore measuring how often he does so should describe his quality. But this idea collapses once we take a closer look at how run scoring actually occurs. The hitter’s goal is twofold: to reach base himself — whether via a hit, walk, hit by pitch, or anything else — and to move runners, including himself, along the path to home plate. As such, the great comparative value of the home run to the triple, the triple to the double, and the double to the single becomes clear. Calling every hit a hit is as silly as calling every coin a coin.

The Style of Pablo Sandoval; or, The Irrationality of Baseball by Eric Freeman

Pablo Sandoval matters because his stats do not conform to a popular rational explanation. However, it would be wrong to categorize him as an outlier, some unholy aberration that complicates an otherwise coherent world. Because, for all baseball’s reliance on structure, that same organized system supports plenty of irregularities without crumbling. 83-win teams get crowned as the best in baseball, three-time Gold Glove winners also do whatever this and this are, the best player in the sport slaps the ball out a pitcher’s hand in the biggest game of the season, one of the purest hitters ever forgets how to play a cutoff, a team wins the pennant due to a force-out applied amidst terrible controversy and doesn’t capture the World Series again for at least a century, etc. ad infinitum. Unpredictable events occur during every day of the season.

162 by Pete Beatty

Baseball runs on holy cliches. That’s not a knock, or it’s not meant as one. Baseball doesn’t worship its cliches unthinkingly — they are celebrated and subverted in equal measure. We need these cliches. They allow us to only half pay attention, to stare at the sky, to just snatch away an inning when that’s all life permits, to play our own games. Cliches give us a crappy map of the world, just enough to keep us from driving off the road, just enough to surprise and delight us when something uncliched presents itself. If we took the time to deal with everything carefully and cautiously and correctly, nothing would ever go wrong, and nothing interesting would ever happen.

Interim Commissioner for Life by Rob Iracane and Kris Liakos

ROB: Listen, I think it’s a great thing to honor a brave man who overcame violent racism to become the first black big leaguer. My problem isn’t that Selig is honoring him, it’s that he’s not honoring him in the right way. For five years running now every single damn player has worn 42 on Jackie Robinson Day instead of letting just one dude wear it as some kind of proud achievement. Like how Ken Griffey Jr. intended it when he came up with the damn idea! Instead we’ve got every Tom, Dick, and Manny running around in the same uni number, confusing radio guys and fans alike. Honor is like whipped lard: spread it too thin and you barely notice it anymore.

1 is the Loneliest Number by Patrick Dubuque

Among Jose Canseco’s many crimes against humanity and overall good taste, a subtle offense transpired twenty years ago, on May 29, 1993. With the Rangers losing to the Red Sox by 11 runs, the star outfielder asked manager Kevin Kennedy to pitch an inning. The resulting spectacle brought shame upon nearly everyone: Canseco himself, the Rangers, baseball fans in general, and especially the three people he managed to get out. Worse still, Canseco hurt his arm in the debacle and was lost for the remainder of the season, his first with the team.

As Far as I Can Go by Tim Marchman

These were difficult years for Pete Alexander, when he was more falling than fallen, when a three-day drunk could be written off as his simply having “broken training,” and when as a great player on an indifferent team managed by Killefer, his personal catcher, he was able to play by nonexistent rules. There was, as always, success on the field — in 1924 he became the fourth modern pitcher to win his 300th game — but there were also an increasing number of incidents such as the one where he sold Wrigley a huge insurance policy and celebrated by getting into a bar-clearing brawl at Catalina Island, where the team took spring training. (Wrigley canceled the policy.)

“It was only when I suggested that a mere fraction of the world’s Big Law firms would survive another decade or two that I grasped the bone-fatiguing chore of running such a business. Theiss wouldn’t endorse the premise, but he didn’t exactly refute it, either. Demand had stopped growing, he told me. There was “substantial overcapacity.” Billable hours were way down industry-wide. “I don’t think anybody who follows the profession would suggest that this is only a temporary situation,” he said. The longer Theiss spoke, the bleaker the picture became.”

No less an authority than Harvey Fierstein makes a call to boycott Russia’s 2014 Winter Games. Actually he makes a pretty good case, since Putin is about one step away from creating forced labor camps for gays:

“Mr. Putin signed a law allowing police officers to arrest tourists and foreign nationals they suspect of being homosexual, lesbian or “pro-gay” and detain them for up to 14 days. Contrary to what the International Olympic Committee says, the law could mean that any Olympic athlete, trainer, reporter, family member or fan who is gay — or suspected of being gay, or just accused of being gay — can go to jail….Earlier in June, Mr. Putin signed yet another antigay bill, classifying ‘homosexual propaganda’ as pornography. The law is broad and vague, so that any teacher who tells students that homosexuality is not evil, any parents who tell their child that homosexuality is normal, or anyone who makes pro-gay statements deemed accessible to someone underage is now subject to arrest and fines.”

So what now? Oh right, nothing: everyone will ignore this some more. Meanwhile, when you Google “Boycott Russian Olympics,” it’s all about Edward Snowden, which is the stupidest thing imaginable.

Susan Eloise Hinton turns 65 today. My personal favorite was That Was Then, This Is Now but you probably liked The Outsiders, or Rumble Fish, or maybe even Tex. Or maybe you’ve never even heard of S.E. Hinton, in which case you might be better suited reading a BuzzFeeᴅ list of late ’90s Nickelodeon shows. I’m sure there’s a new one up right now. There usually is.