The Tapes: May 25

Welcome to the Memorial Day Weekend edition of The Tapes. It’s raining in New York. I’m working Memorial Day. Other than that, fun weekend. To the links: * I just finished writing a story for the Saint John’s alumni magazine. It’s extraordinary stuff. And in the next alumni magazine, the extraordinary story will share space [...]

Fury and Guestie fix the Lakers

Yes, we’re going to talk about the Lakers again. We’re going to talk about them until we get this thing figured out. We’ll stay here all night if we have to. We’ll write 25,000 words. We’ll circumvent the salary cap with a shady deal that lands a 48-year-old Joe Smith. We’ll bring Magic out of [...]

And then the Lakers were done

When I was a kid and the Lakers’ season ended in defeat it was all over the moment CBS cut away from its coverage. The next day – or two days later, depending on how late the game ended – I would read an 800-word AP wrapup in the Mankato Free Press or Star Tribune. [...]

Fury saves the world

As rain poured down on New York City Tuesday afternoon, I escaped into an incredibly chilly movie theater on the Upper West Side. For more than two hours, I stared up at a giant screen and watched a group of superheroes save the world while talking about whether they could trust a man named Fury. [...]

The Fury Files: Chris Ballard

Back by popular demand, it’s The Fury Files, the seventh-most downloaded Q&A on Kindle. As always, I will shamelessly plug previous editions, so check out my interviews with Tom Linnemann, John Millea, David Brauer, Joe Posnanski, Pat Coleman, Kevin Van Valkenburg, Michael Kruse and Chris Jones. This week’s guest is Chris Ballard, a Senior Writer for Sports [...]

Long live the bodega

New Yorkers, like everyone, enjoy their local quirks, and bodegas are a great source of quirk, from their cats to their strangely worded, handwritten credit policies. But most bodegas are really the same where it counts: Each sells the same assortment of junk food and toiletries… If 7-Eleven can stock those things reliably and cheaply, [...]

The Tapes: May 4

Hello. Welcome. * A New Jersey woman was arrested for the burns her daughter suffered from tanning. That’s part of the story. The real story is the woman’s face. * The most bizarre story of the week – okay, not the most bizarre, not with the tanning woman above – was the tale of an [...]

Stephen King’s best, what do ya got?

My mom got me started reading Stephen King, years after she gave up on him. She read all his early books. Night Shift. The Shining. The Stand. The Dead Zone. Carrie. But her reading of King ended with Cujo, as she swore off his books when the horror master killed off the little boy at [...]

NBA playoffs: Today and yesterday

The good thing about writing about the NBA playoffs after they’ve started is that you won’t type sentences like, “Iman Shumpert’s defense will play a key role when the Knicks upset the Heat, but the Derrick Rose-led Bulls will ultimately prevail in the East.” The playoffs are only two days old and already two players [...]

The Tapes: April 27 (and Fury’s foul)

Every year my friend John Rosengren comes to New York for the ASJA Conference, and every year we try to make it to a Yankees or Mets game. It’s a chance to watch some big-market baseball, but mostly we catch up and talk about writing and projects and goals and hopes. Last night we met before [...]