This site in beta. Yes, still.
I guess it wasn’t enough already. New Salon column on this week’s press conference, the closest thing we’ve had yet, or are likely to get for a while, to a truth commission.
There was also one about Brett Favre’s latest retirement the other day, speaking of stories that we’re all ready for them to go away.
New Salon column about the latest chapter in the book of steroid hysteria.
Salon column from Monday about the game — the Steelers won, case you didn’t hear — and one from Wednesday arising from the debate about Kurt Warner and the Hall of Fame in the comments section of Monday’s piece.
Someone on Facebook pointed out that I never really came out for or against Warner as a Hall of Famer. That’s true. I’m kind of agnostic. I don’t really have a feel for what really constitutes a Hall of Famer in sports other than baseball. Coming at it like a baseball guy, Warner has a rockin’ peak but not enough good years for my taste.
But I don’t know. For all I know the Hall is filled with guys who only had three or four great years. Football careers are short and injury-filled.
I lean no on Warner, but am willing to be convinced. That’s why I said I’d love to see a comparison of Warner with other great quarterbacks, but adjusted for era. I already know that he threw for way more yards than Bob Griese. I want to know if he was really better.
The U.K. tabloid News of the World published a shocking photo of Michael Phelps smoking a bong at a college party in South Carolina.
Yes, shocking. A 23-year-old kid who trains slavishly for a solitary sport most of the year sparks up at a party during his off time. I’m just beside myself with astonishment. I mean, what next, people. What next.
The accompanying story reports that Phelps’ people tried to get the NOTW not to publish the photo, and one of the offers was that Phelps would write a sports column for the paper for three years in exchange for keeping the pic under wraps. The paper said no thanks and published the photo.
I’d like to extend a similar offer to News of the World and any other publication, in any language: In exchange for a bong and a three-year supply of marijuana, I will agree NOT to write a sports column.
Interested editors please contact me at this address.
Bob Edwards asked me on the radio who I was picking in the Super Bowl. I told him the Arizona Cardinals. Noting that President Obama is taking the Pittsburgh Steelers — since he’s a lot more likely to get votes in Pennsylvania than in Arizona — Bob said, “You’re going against the leader of the free world.”
I said, “It’s a hard habit to break.”
New Salon column. Trying to get all zeitgeisty.
New Salon column, a quickie about John Updike, who died Tuesday morning, and his famous baseball piece “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.”
Quickie? Forty minutes from word of Updike’s death reaching Salon to this piece hitting the Web. Five-hundred words. Nothing great or anything, but it’s 500 words. You can count ’em. That old newspaper training comes in handy sometimes.
When Salon was new it used to shock the kids on the editorial staff, who’d come straight from college and hadn’t worked for newspapers or wire services, that someone could turn a story around in a half hour or so. That was when I started feeling like one of the old dudes. I was 33.
New Salon column. How did I forget to mention Scrappy-Doo?
AP headline: “Marc Anthony sings with wife at inaugural ball”
A bit late in the game to post it, but I had a busy day. You? My new job is being the guy in charge of Salon’s cover, a responsibility so awesome I often wear pants when on the clock. Today was kind of a 10-hour sprint, with constant updates from our crack team of reporters and commentators.
And hang on, I’ve been joking around so that sounds like a joke about the crack team. Not a joke. Our writers are really good.
So it would have been enough a crazy day, but I had to do it with a very bored 5-year-old hanging around. Thank you, San Francisco Unified School District, for randomly abdicating your responsibility of educating my kid on one of my busiest work days of the decade. Thanks for that. I’m sure the staff is much more developed now than it was on Monday. Whatever that means. I don’t know what it means but I think beer is involved.
Buster was actually a champ, only demonstrating stir-crazy, cabin-fever like behavior on a couple of occasions. I did get a chance to take him out to lunch at Starvin Marvin’s on Geneva, where we had really good cheeseburgers — and watched the inauguration parade.
Every once in a while Buster would walk into the room, see Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer on the TV and say something like, “Man, why are those guys still talking?”
A nation was wondering about that right along with you, son.