No new ESPN+ pieces this week but I expect to have several next week. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Century A New World, the end of the Century trilogy that began with Spice Road and continued with Eastern Wonders.
If you read my free email newsletter, you learned at least two interesting things this week, one of which is that I’ve backed away from Twitter by logging out of it on my phone. I find the entire atmosphere on the site too toxic for my tastes, which even continued on Friday as I checked it on my laptop to find someone angry I didn’t tweet about a particular story that broke yesterday.
I’ll be at the Under Armour Game at Wrigley Field on Monday, a great event that showcases many of the high school players who’ll be drafted in the first round next June. It’s free to attend; you can request tickets ahead of time or just get them at the ticket windows that day. The game starts at 2 pm and I highly recommend it.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: If you enjoyed Fleabag, nominated for a slew of Emmy Awards this year, as much as I did, you’ll probably enjoy this GQ interview with star/creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, conducted by Tina Fey.
- The Guardian‘s The long read feature looks at the rise and fall of French cuisine, long considered the backbone of a culinary education, but now seen as stuffy and dated in many quarters.
- I hate my lawn, other than the modest pleasure of mowing it (I listen to the Grierson & Leitch podcast, which correlates quite well with the time required to mow, and I use the cuttings in my compost pile), and I’m losing the battle to various native weeds. Lawn care in the U.S. is a $40 billion a year business, and it’s all a disaster for the environment. Maybe it’s time to turn away from grass; I’m faced with a decision this fall, as too much of my lawn has lost out to large and smooth crabgrass, a sign that my soil isn’t providing the real grass with the nutrients it needs, and don’t get me started on spurge.
- The Guardian looks at the rise in audiobook sales, asking if it’s good, bad, or both.
- I read & recommended Ed Yong’s book I Contain Multitudes about a year and a half ago; in the book, he described nascent efforts to combat mosquito-borne illnesses by using a Wolbachia bacterium to naturally sterilize mosquito populations in the wild. One such experiment in China has nearly eradicated Aedes albopictus from two islands,
- For Athletic subscribers, I highly recommend the great Peter Gammons’ profile of the majors’ best rookie this year, Fernando Tatis, Jr.
- I finally got to Razza in Jersey City this week, about a year and a half after the New York Times food critic said it was the best pizza in New York City. He recently revised that statement after Una Pizza Napoletana returned to Manhattan after several years in San Francisco. I went shortly before the move, and it was spectacular.
- One of my favorite restaurants in the Phoenix area, Scottsdale’s Pig & Pickle, closed suddenly this week in what sounds like a dispute with a new landlord.
- There’s an underreported scandal going on in Malaysia right now: ousted Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife are on trial for corruption, and prosecutors showed his wife racked up $800,000 in jewelry charges on a credit card linked to a state-owned investment fund. President Trump welcomed Razak to the White House in 2017, when the embezzlement scandal had already become public but Razak had yet to be voted out of office.
- LGBT rights are under attack in Poland too, as the right-wing party in power is cheering on towns creating “LGBT-free zones”.
- An Arizona newscaster dropped an f-bomb on air after the Phoenix New Times wrote that she joined a far-right social networking site that has attracted several overt racists banned from Twitter. An Arizona Republic editorial wrote that it’ll probably make her more popular.
- A Philadelphia pediatrician wrote about her attempts to empathize and reason with “vaccine-hesitant” parents, even though the best solution is to fire them into the sun.
- Lots of board game news as we approach Gen Con (I’ll be there as usual): Ravensburger announced Villainous: Evil Comes Prepared, the second expansion to last year’s Disney’s Villainous. You can pre-order it exclusively through Target right now.
- Dire Wolf is taking its free-to-play digital card game Eternal to tabletop, releasing a physical version of the game in August; you can pre-order it through Dire Wolf’s site.
- Renegade Game Studios announced pre-orders for Paladins of the West Kingdom, the second game in Shem Phillips’ West Kingdom series and his fifth in the series of Viking-themed games that began with Raiders of the North Sea.
- The role-playing game Gloomhaven is coming to Steam and just entered Early Access this week.
Keith, as the son of a landscaper/golf course greenskeeper, I have always loved lawn maintenance. But I feel for you watching your lawn suffer. Unfortunately, living in Delaware is a big strike against you, because when all that lush farmland was sold to real estate developers, they scooped off all the really good topsoil and sold it, replacing it with this crappy clay-based soil. So growing a nice lawn in the Blue Hen state is a tough task. You might check out zoysia grass, which is extremely drought-resistant and nearly impervious to crabgrass. The downside is that it doesn’t get a nice, lush green color like everyone desires, and the green color fades once the temperature regularly drops below 65 degrees. But it beats the hell out of crabgrass and you don’t have to worry about dumping tons of chemicals into your ground water supply.
I really dislike maintaining my lawn, and would love to hire someone at some point to design a native plant landscape.
We have zoysia in our front yard, and for the last nine years tried it in the back yard with little success. We have three main problems- lack of sunshine/too many screen tress, some drainage issues and three dogs. In the last month we switched the back to artificial grass. We have a great lawn maintenance company now, but, our previous one was not the best. In fact, while their work was spotty, the reason we were forced to terminate them came because we found out they were horrible bigots who discriminated against LGBT people.
Time to ditch the lawn for a permaculture garden.
I assume you dont rent a car since no need with Wrigley; Burt’s Place in Morton Grove still has fantastic pan pizza (it’s basically a better version of Pequod’s; the sausage and bell pepper mix is wonderful) since Burt sold to some guys he then trained before he passed away, but maybe by next year they’ll have their planned second location open just off the Irving Park blue line stop as you’d need a car to get to the original.
Yeah we were talking about going but it’s a bit of a hike since we are skipping a car this time. So much else to eat in Chicago anyway.
How was Razza?
Razza was excellent. Maybe top 20 on my overall list, maybe the fringes of the top 10. Una is better, I think.
I read your newsletter several times and…girlfriend?
Correct.
I look forward to your newsletter because of your candor and thoughtfulness about how to navigate life’s difficulties. As an example, I deeply appreciate your ongoing discussion of mental health and mental illness. Additionally I’ve found a great deal of value in your writings on fatherhood, so I’ll say this:
1. Your situation sounds complicated (and downright terrifying to me), and with that I wish you and your family all the best.
2. If you ever write about it, I’ll be there to read it, not for details about what happened, but for your thoughts on how you approached the complications and how you handled certain aspects of a pretty big series of life transitions.
3. Obviously I respect your privacy and your daughter’s too, so despite my interest I am fine with you sticking to baseball, so to speak, with regard to this matter.
As a resident in Phoenix I’m delighted that I have no idea who “hook and lake” are and it’ll stay that way.
I must be winning!
I’m also saddened that you’re stepping away from Twitter. You’re one of my favorite follows however it’s totally understandable as it’s a hideous place. I rarely tweet cause the ugliness is too much. It is unimaginable what you must see as a person with significant popularity and a desire to make a stand on issues. Sorry to see you step back but I appreciated your work there. So thanks for your good work done on Twitter
Mere hours after I said I was stepping away from Twitter, I got attacked for not commenting on Jonah Keri’s arrest for beating his pregnant wife and threatening to kill her (what exactly would I have to add to this? I don’t work with him and we’re not friends). It’s a toxic environment; comment and you’re attacked, don’t comment and you’re attacked. Fuck that. I joined for interaction with readers, not for asshats like this Ryan guy (who didn’t follow me and doesn’t read any of my content) to show up and question my integrity. One guy like that every once in a while would be fine. It’s a daily stream of abuse and I don’t see any reason to subject myself to that any longer.
And today, while looking at my Twitter DMs, I opened my notifications and was greeted with some MAGA chud who took a picture of me and my teenaged daughter at the Under Armour game.
Count me in the camp that loves your content and commentary on twitter. I joined twitter specifically to follow you and Dan Savage…which probably says a lot about me. I hope to see you back with a vengeance and soon. Twitter needs your brain as much as your snark.
I’m naming my next kid “Xtreme Mowchine”.
Keith, serious question: Is our society, or in fact, our entire world, better off because of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and other social media sites? Have they made a net-positive contribution to the fabric of our society or our lives?
I am neither qualified nor knowledgeable enough to answer that question.
With all due respect, there’s only one place to go for the best New York slice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgEeDR98X8
Knew it was this before I even clicked on it and I’m from California. Nicely done.
That Peter Gammons profile of Tatis Jr. is great. I’m a White Sox fan, and so by definition will have to follow his career for the next two decades. Last month I tweeted Tatis’ fWAR, which at that point was on a 162-game pace of over 9, and offered the unhelpful comment that “Shields for Tatis will go down as the worst trade in MLB history.”
It led to a week of wonderful conversations and new followers from folks in San Diego, and new friends. Twitter can be good. This was one of those times.
I completely understand your stepping away from Twitter. I always shuddered at the abuse I would see on the platform with celebrities and experts.
I was a voracious user of Twitter for a number of years for insight, news, and knowledge and had curated my follows to good folks on my areas of interest (finance & investing mostly, and select humorous accounts, and you). But I had to let it go because political/Drumpf content just so dominated my timeline (not to mention Twitter’s ridiculous algo adjustments away from chronological ordering). I am all the happier for it, and while I have lost a good source of knowledge, I’m slowly figuring out different ways to find it.
Also, as an earlier commenter posted, you are well within your right to keep your latest personal developments private. But as someone who several months ago began marriage therapy, I would appreciate any new ways I can learn from your experiences (raising girls being another). Thanks for your candor.
Like other readers, the word “girlfriend” stopped me and I re-read a few times. Best to you, your daughter and your family during what I am sure is a challenging time.