I haven’t run across as many pieces lately that struck me as sharable. So this entry spans over a month of collection. Thus the first is a little out-of-date, and I’m guessing many of you who would be interested in it have already read it.
Wright Thompson is a modern Gary Smith: everything he writes is completely compelling. Especially when he has such an interesting subject.
This is an amazing look at Joe Montana and the person he has become. On one hand, he lives exactly the cool-ass life you would think he lives. On the other, like so many former elite athletes, there are some slights, real and perceived, that he can’t let go of.
This piece is packed with memorable anecdotes. My favorite, though, are the sections that feature Steve Young’s thoughts. Their relationship is fascinating. Not only does Young, maybe, understand Montana as well as anyone can, he clearly still idolizes the man he helped to drive out of San Francisco.
“Every player in history wants to write more in the book,” Young says. “I think about that all the time.”
His voice gets softer.
“No matter how much you write,” he says, “you want to write more.”
Young goes quiet.
Then says, “I’ve talked to you more about this than he and I would ever consider talking about it.”
I was lucky enough to live here in Indy during the Greg Oden era. That was an incredible time. And this is an incredible piece covering his life and career and how he arrived at his current place: an assistant for Butler. I knew a lot of the details of his life, but a few of them in this piece were new to me. Guy has been through a lot. I really hope he can stay healthy and find success in his new path. He always seemed like such a good kid and it seemed so unfair that his body wouldn’t let him even try to reach the expectations that surrounded him.
Maybe Oden’s calling will prove to be at the end of the bench, not the paint. Maybe his potential can be reincarnated. He’s realized that it’s okay to change course, change careers. Sometimes, he thinks about former child actors and how it disheartens him when he sees that people shame them for doing something different as adults. “What did you expect them to do? Sit in the house and live off the one thing that you know them from?” Oden says.
A couple very serious pieces about the state of modern journalism.
It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible
Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.
IN ORDER TO KEEP OUR EDITORIAL PAGE COMPLETELY BALANCED, WE ARE HIRING MORE DIPSHITS
Why do we hire dipshits? It’s simple. After the 2016 election, we got yelled at a lot by right-wingers. How could you report such negative stories about Trump by printing the words he says? Why don’t 100% of your stories talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails, rather than just the ones on the front page? They had a point.
Stephen Hyden went to a Bruce Springsteen concert last week. I loved his summary, in which he addressed the elephant in the room. One of my biggest music regrets is that I’ve never seen Springsteen live, and likely never will.
Watching Sunday’s concert overall felt like closing a circle. It reminded me of a genre movie where a gang decides to team up for one caper, in the hopes that they can eventually walk off forever into the sunset.
On His Latest Tour, Bruce Springsteen Contemplates His Own Ending
I enjoyed scrolling through this. As with any music list, there were a number of “What they hell are they thinking?” entries. Their choice for number one, while fun, seems like a reach to me.