The Hero No One Knew

Even in the off-season Payton’s life was laid out for him. He and his wife, Connie, employed a live-in nanny, Luna Picart, who did most of the cooking and cleaning and helped rear their son, Jarrett, and daughter, Brittney. Payton had an executive assistant, Ginny Quirk, who answered all his calls, filed all his papers, scheduled all his appointments. His agent, Bud Holmes, handled most of the necessary filings and contacts regarding Payton’s quest to own an NFL team. His accountant, Jerry Richman, handled financial matters. Quirk and, later, Tucker, managed the day-to-day running of his charity. Now, thanks to that pampering, upon his retirement in the winter of 1988 as the NFL’s alltime leading rusher, Payton found himself burdened by a realization that had struck thousands of ex-athletes before him: I am bored out of my mind.

Published: Oct 3, 2011
Length: 26 minutes (6,734 words)

Moving Day

(Fiction) I didn’t hear that Duncan Pratt had been killed until I’d been out of the Army for two weeks and had gone four days without a single thought about that final year in Vietnam. If the phone had been disconnected on time, I would never have heard at all. A mutual buddy from military intelligence school called on his way to a year of bumming in Europe. He talked a long time before saying, I guess you heard that Duncan Pratt was killed. No, I said. How? He was killed by a mortar round in Pleiku, our friend said; and he hung up to catch a plane to Luxembourg.

Source: Fictionaut
Published: May 10, 2010
Length: 12 minutes (3,022 words)

Flick Chicks

The junior executives’ office at Thinkscope Visioncloud was nicer than any room within a fifty-mile radius of the “Office” studio. After I finished pitching one of my ideas for a low-budget romantic comedy, I was met with silence. One of the execs sheepishly looked at the other execs. He finally said, “Yeah, but we’re really trying to focus on movies about board games. People really seem to respond to those.”

Source: New Yorker
Published: Oct 3, 2011
Length: 6 minutes (1,535 words)

The Making of Miss Hornet

As you walk the main hallway, a culture of inclusion unfolds. Hair styles change to reflect the ideal of glamour for a young black woman of a bygone era. In the 1970s, the afro suddenly asserts itself, loud and proud. In 1979, the first Asian face appears: a young émigré of Vietnam. That’s a good story. A few steps beyond and a white face appears among more black ones. In the last decade, the pattern portrays an explosion of diversity: South Asian, African-American, Caucasian, Hispanic. A reflection of the new America? Perhaps. Then the last face: a smiling young woman, her hair covered in a resplendent white hijab. Welcome to Booker T.

Source: This Land Press
Published: Sep 26, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,006 words)

The Ultimate Oral History of ‘Wet Hot American Summer’

For this complete-ish oral history in celebration of Wet Hot’s 10th anniversary, we asked director and writer David Wain, his cowriter and creative partner, Michael Showalter, and stars including Janeane Garofalo, Paul Rudd, David Hyde Pierce, Elizabeth Banks, and Amy Poehler to reminisce about the shoot, the living conditions, the kids, the notoriously horrendous weather, and the hilarity (and debauchery) that took place off-camera. Throw another log on the soaking-wet campfire—theirs is an epic tale of camaraderie and survival in the heart of Pennsylvania darkness.

Source: Details
Published: Sep 27, 2011
Length: 51 minutes (12,843 words)

Our Man in Kandahar

While beatings in police custody have been common in Kandahar for as long as there have been police, a number of Afghan and international officials familiar with the situation there told me that Raziq has brought with him a new level of brutality. Since his arrival, Raziq has launched a wave of arrests across the city in coordination with the government intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security. One human-rights official who has conducted prison visits in Kandahar told me that the number of prisoners is up more than 50 percent since Raziq’s arrival.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Sep 27, 2011
Length: 22 minutes (5,537 words)

Parents of a Certain Age

The age of first motherhood is rising all over the West. In Italy, Germany, and Great Britain, it’s 30. In the U.S., it’s gone up to 25 from 21 since 1970, and in New York State, it’s even higher, at 27. But among the extremely middle-aged, births aren’t just inching up. They are booming. In 2008, the most recent year for which detailed data are available, about 8,000 babies were born to women 45 or older, more than double the number in 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Five hundred and forty-one of these were born to women age 50 or older—a 375 percent increase. In adoption, the story is the same. Nearly a quarter of adopted children in the U.S. have parents more than 45 years older than they are.

Published: Sep 26, 2011
Length: 23 minutes (5,895 words)

Diary: Which One of You Is Jesus?

In 1959, Dr Milton Rokeach, a social psychologist, received a research grant to bring together three psychotic, institutionalised patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, in order to make a two and a half year study of them. Rokeach specialised in belief systems: how it is that people develop and keep (or change) their beliefs according to their needs and the requirements of the social world they inhabit. A matter of the inside coming to terms with the outside in order to rub along well enough to get through a life. As a rule people look for positive authority or referents to back up their essential beliefs about themselves in relation to the world: the priest, imam, Delia Smith, the politburo, gang leader, Milton Friedman, your mother, my favourite novelist. It works well enough, and when it does, we call ourselves and others like us sane. When it goes awry, when people lose and/or reject all positive referents in the real world for the self inside, we call them delusional, psychotic, mad.

Published: Sep 22, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,405 words)

Personal Best

Not long afterward, I watched Rafael Nadal play a tournament match on the Tennis Channel. The camera flashed to his coach, and the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
But doctors don’t. I’d paid to have a kid just out of college look at my serve. So why did I find it inconceivable to pay someone to come into my operating room and coach me on my surgical technique?

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 3, 2011
Length: 31 minutes (7,913 words)

A Third Reich Past: Why I Cannot Answer Questions about My Grandfather

At 12, I grasped for the first time who he was. There was a photograph of him in our history textbook with the caption: “Reichsjugendführer Baldur von Schirach” — leader of the Hitler Youth. I can still see it in front of me: My name was really in our textbook. On the facing page was a photograph of Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, next to the caption “resistance fighter.” The word “fighter” sounded much better. I sat in class next to a Stauffenberg, a grandson like me; we are still friends to this day. He didn’t know anything more than I did.

Source: Spiegel
Published: Sep 23, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,441 words)