Brad Zellar This is it, apparently. With the seventh and final installment in the series (list price: $34.95), the Harry Potter gravy train finally lurches to a halt. That, of course, means this will be a bittersweet occasion for J.K. Rowling’s legion of fans—adults and whippersnappers alike—and perhaps even more so for the publishing industry, which has … Read more
When I was at home, I was in a better place. —Shakespeare, As You Like It “I’m somewhere in a godforsaken rainforest on the north coast of West Papua, Indonesia, and I’m ready to get the hell out of here.” So begins Michael Behar’s “The Selling of the Last Savage,” which originally appeared in Outside … Read more
That one felt…I don’t know, it felt bad, I guess, like a game in late September with hope sliding away with every pitch and a cold autumn rain beating the leaves from the trees along the boulevards (cue Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”). Maybe that’s just because it was a Friday night, and Friday nights don’t … Read more
Source materials for the project at hand, whatever it is, and whatever it might yet be: Grimm’s Fairy Tales; Hans Christian Andersen; William Graham Sumner’s Folkways; Frazer’s The Golden Bough; Mythology (Graves, Bulfinch, Hamilton, etc.); the Icelandic Sagas and Norse myths; The Odyssey and The Iliad; The Aeneid; Ovid’s Metamorphoses; The Divine Comedy; James Brown; … Read more
The first two games of the Mets series were a perfect snapshot of the Twins’ see-saw season to date: An 8-1 loss and a 9-0 victory in the span of 24 hours. Five hits one night, thirteen the next. Go figure. Actually, if the season ended today, you could put the last eleven games in … Read more
I don’t have the energy to write an entire entry in Irish or Cockney slang, but that’s what I feel like doing every time this team slips into its offensive (and I do mean offensive) imitation of a World Cup soccer team, which lately seems to be several times a week. I just took a … Read more
You can’t explain or make sense of so much of the shit that happens during the course of a baseball season, the streaks and slumps and befuddling momentum shifts, the steady supply of wholly unexpected developments of both the pleasant and the not-so-pleasant variety. All those things –the day-to-day intangibles– are what make the sport … Read more
I say it all the time, but baseball’s a beautiful game when it’s played well, and when everything clicks it looks so easy. Time and again this season, however, the Twins have demonstrated just how hard the game really is, and how ugly it can be. The thing is, though, is that after Tuesday’s win … Read more
This here is the latest phenom to make the Twins look sick, a guy who hadn’t even made it into the fifth inning –the fifth stinking inning— in any of his previous starts. What the hell? Seriously, what the hell? Where do you want to lay the blame? At this point I can say only … Read more
Because you ask things like what the hell? and why? Because I guess you want to know. Because I joined up with the Amish after my dad decided it would make a man of me and it was either that or go to work at my grandfather’s automobile dealership and I knew damn well that … Read more