Search Results for: Comedy

Is an ESPN Columnist Scamming People on the Internet?

Longreads Pick

The story of a mysterious sports writer, her business partners, and an alleged plot to co-opt an NBA fan’s Facebook page:

“Phillips kept up her correspondence with Ben, the 19-year-old college student and creator of the NBA Memes Facebook page. She said he could make up to as much as $1,000 per post as a contributor to her new sports-comedy site. Within 15 minutes, she had another idea: ‘Here’s something I just thought of: Instead of becoming a contributor, would you like to join our team as an editor/creator for the memes section?’

“With this proposal, he could make even more money. She spelled out specifics for him: She told him that her ‘initial goal’ for the site would be 2.5 million pageviews per month, which would bring him $38,400 a year. By the fall, they’d have 7.5 million pageviews per month and he’d be making $102,000 per year. Big money for a 19-year-old college student.”

Source: Deadspin
Published: May 1, 2012
Length: 21 minutes (5,445 words)

A strange real-life murder inspires a new film starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. How does the victim’s real family feel about being the subject of a black comedy?

I was living in Los Angeles when Aunt Marge was murdered in 1996 and hadn’t been to Carthage, where I was born, in quite a few years. I went back for the trial in 1998 because, let’s face it, it’s not often that someone in your family becomes the focus of a sensational murder case, on the local news for weeks at a time, the circumstances of her demise so tawdry and bizarre that the story appeared in People magazine, on ‘Hard Copy’ and, eventually, on the guilty-pleasure pinnacle of true-crime cable-TV programs, ‘City Confidential.’ And there was something about Aunt Marge’s ending up in a freezer that seemed appropriate. She’d always been kind of coldhearted. It was not an unfitting end.

“How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze.” — Joe Rhodes, The New York Times

See also: “The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist.” — Wired, Dec. 27, 2010

How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze

Longreads Pick

A strange real-life murder inspires a new film starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. How does the victim’s real family feel about being the subject of a black comedy?

“I was living in Los Angeles when Aunt Marge was murdered in 1996 and hadn’t been to Carthage, where I was born, in quite a few years. I went back for the trial in 1998 because, let’s face it, it’s not often that someone in your family becomes the focus of a sensational murder case, on the local news for weeks at a time, the circumstances of her demise so tawdry and bizarre that the story appeared in People magazine, on ‘Hard Copy’ and, eventually, on the guilty-pleasure pinnacle of true-crime cable-TV programs, ‘City Confidential.’ And there was something about Aunt Marge’s ending up in a freezer that seemed appropriate. She’d always been kind of coldhearted. It was not an unfitting end.”

Author: Joe Rhodes
Published: Apr 13, 2012

[May 2005] How Steve Martin transitioned from comedy to writing, and how celebrity affected his day-to-day life:

SM: You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famous just right. [Laughs] And then there’s kind of a respect or distance or something, but you have a little bit more grease.

BLVR: When did the “just right” occur for you?

SM: I would say mid-eighties. There’s a kind of heat fever that just dissipates. You’re not someone who’s constantly being followed.

“Interview: Steve Martin.” — Meghan Daum, The Believer (May 2005)

See more #longreads from The Believer

Interview: Steve Martin

Longreads Pick

How Steve Martin transitioned from comedy to writing, and how celebrity affected his day-to-day life:

SM: You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famous just right. [Laughs] And then there’s kind of a respect or distance or something, but you have a little bit more grease.

BLVR: When did the “just right” occur for you?

SM: I would say mid-eighties. There’s a kind of heat fever that just dissipates. You’re not someone who’s constantly being followed.

Source: The Believer
Published: May 1, 2005
Length: 19 minutes (4,776 words)

The comedian on his early influences, stand-up career and his hatred of traditional sitcom writing:

I was explaining to my girls, we went by a Chinese restaurant that has the big LED sign, and it has this sweeping pattern, then flashes red, then blue, then blue sweeps across from left to right, right to left, red sweeps across, and they said, ‘How does it do it?’ and I said, ‘There’s a circuit, somebody writes a program that tells the stupid lights to do this pattern, and they burn the program onto a circuit, and so that circuit just keeps taking this one trip.’ So there’s a guy on every show that does that, he has his one way, he has his variety, about eight different joke formulas, and you refill them with different stuff. He’s either the dumb guy or, like, Lisa Kudrow’s character on Friends or whatever. ‘I thought coffee was from Brazil.’ ‘Ugh, no the guy’s name is Coffee. He’s from Italy.’ Garbage like that. Then you start building the story, then you go away on an act break. Then you build a third act that just is the train wreck of not really much fun, but it pays everything off, it leaves everybody feeling exactly the same way they left, that they felt before the show started. That’s what shows are meant to do, is leave on par and leave a few jokes behind, to be printed in Entertainment Weekly’s sound bites.

“The Writearound: Louis C.K.” — Jonah Weiner, jonahweiner.com

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New York Magazine's Ben Williams: My Top Longreads of 2011

Ben Williams is the online editorial director at New York Magazine.

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1. Celebrity profiles are the hardest genre to make fresh. So props to GQ for doing it not once but three times, with Jessica Pressler on Channing Tatum, Edith Zimmerman on Chris Evans, and Will Leitch on Michael Vick. With Pressler and Zimmerman, what’s great is the willingness of both subject and writer to play, and the dynamic between them—these pieces exploit the “profile as date” subtext really well. It’s fun to think about them as a sort of inverse to Jennifer Egan’s brilliant satire of the profile biz in A Visit From the Goon Squad.  In the Vick piece, what I like is the way that Leitch uses the PR apparatus around the process of profiling Michael Vick to reveal what’s at stake for him. He didn’t get much time with Vick, just a photo shoot and a phone call, but he used it to both explain and complicate the Michael Vick Story that the quarterback’s handlers want to tell. 

2. There are a bunch of New Yorker stories I could pick—Ryan Lizza’s “leading from behind” piece on Obama’s foreign policy was so influential; Jane Mayer on Thomas Drake and state secrets was fascinating and moving; Kelefah Sanneh not only wrote a great analysis of Odd Future, he tracked down their missing member; David Grann is David Grann—but my favorite was Jeffrey Toobin’s take on Clarence Thomas. There are so many things going on here: It’s a revisionist view that frames Thomas as very smart and canny; it shows how one justice can move the entire Supreme Court over decades through the way opinions are written; it sets the stage for next year’s healthcare ruling as a culmination of Thomas’s entire mission; and it makes clear once again just what a strange, extremist man he is.

3. Overall, my favorite thing in the new New York Times Magazine is probably the Riffs section—it identified a gap in the preview-and-review saturated culture journalism market, which is (relatively) long form argument/idea-driven pieces. To pick a few highlights: Dan Kois’s piece on avant-garde movies kicked off a fierce, endless, at times kind of ridiculous debate that just about every movie critic had to weigh in on; Adam Sternbergh’s piece on jokeless comedies defined an era; Sam Anderson on Derek Jeter both mocked empty sports hagiography and read like a hilarious version of Donald Barthelme. Alternate winner in this category is the New York Review of Books, which published some of the best cultural essays this year—Daniel Mendelsohn on Mad Men and Spiderman, Lorrie Moore on Friday Night Lights, and Dan Chiasson on Keith Richards were all delightful and provocative.

4. I just loved Paul Ford’s “The Web is a Customer Service Medium.” It’s the kind of piece that would be hard to get into a print magazine for various reasons, but it resonated instantly online. It’s a pretty abstract argument about a subject that’s not exactly under-analyzed—what is web content about, and how is it different from other forms of content?—but it opens by coining a phrase which instantly makes sense to anyone who works on the web: “Why wasn’t I consulted?” And then it goes on to make a very detailed, specific, convincing, and non-buzzword-filled argument that isn’t formulated expressly to piss off anyone who works in “old media,” which is refreshing.

5. Finally, some favorites in the emerging multimedia genre of longform tweeting. I probably read more words on Twitter than anywhere else this year, and I am grateful for the stamina of those who somehow manage to tweet and retweet extended thoughts all day, every day on specific themes. I learned as much about the Arab Spring by dipping into @acarvin’s feed as from any essays about it. @daveweigel is constantly insightful, and one of the few people capable of being funny about politics. Following @questlove’s stream is like listening to the world’s kindest, most passionate music geek.

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Gangrey: Our Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Gangrey.com is a site dedicated to the practice of great newspaper and magazine storytelling. 

Some of these picks make it seem like we like each other. We do, most of the time. But we’re also intense critics. We get together in the woods in Georgia one weekend each year to tear one another apart. Physical combat is not rare. It’s in that spirit that you’ll find some cross pollination in the picks below. You’ll also see some good stuff that hasn’t shown up on the Top 5 lists so far. That’s on purpose. Hope you enjoy, and please know you’re welcome to come join us for last call over at gangrey.com. Drinks are on Wright.

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Wright Thompson

Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine, and he lives in Oxford, Mississippi.


“A Brevard Woman Disappeared, But Never Left Home,” Michael Kruse, St. Petersburg Times

“You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” John Jeremiah Sullivan, New York Times Magazine

“The View From Within,” Seth Wickersham, ESPN The Magazine

“Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?” Tom Junod, Esquire

“The Real Lesson of the Tucson Tragedy,” David Von Drehle, Time

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Justin Heckert

Heckert is a writer living in Atlanta. 

“The Apostate” by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker

 ”The Bomb That Didn’t Go Off,” Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

“Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?” Susan Dominus, New York Times Magazine

“A Brevard Woman Disappeared, but Never Left Home”, by Michael Kruse, St. Petersburg Times

“Staying the Course”, Wright Thompson, ESPN 

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Thomas Lake

Lake is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated living in Atlanta.


 “A Brevard Woman Disappeared, But Never Left Home,” Michael Kruse, St. Petersburg Times

“True Grits,” Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker (sub. required)

“Diving Headlong Into A Sunny Paradise,” Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times

“Could This Be Happening? A Man’s Nightmare Made Real,” Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times

“When A Diver Goes Missing, A Deep Cave Is Scene Of A Deeper Mystery,” Ben Montgomery, St. Petersburg Times

“The Beards Are A Joke,” Justin Heckert, Atlanta Magazine, April 2011

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Mark Johnson

Johnson is a 2010 Pulitzer winner who covers health and science for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and once played guitar for a Rockford, Ill., grunge band called The Bloody Stumps.


“Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man,” Barry Bearak, New York Times Magazine

“Punched Out,” John Branch, New York Times

“The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist,” Rich Schapiro, Wired

“Imminent Danger,” Meg Kissinger, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Diving headlong into a sunny paradise,” Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times

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Michael Kruse

Kruse, a staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times and contributing writer to ESPN’s Grantland, won this year’s ASNE award for distinguished non-deadline writing.


“The Lost Boys” Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly

The easiest-to-read hardest thing I read this year.

“The Lazarus File,” Matthew McGough, The Atlantic

Simple: suspense and surprise.

“You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” John Jeremiah Sullivan, The New York Times Magazine

My first reaction when I read this? Jealousy and awe. And when I read it a second time? And a third? Same.

“A man’s nightmare made real,” Chris Goffard, the Los Angeles Times

Riveting. The work of a master.

“God’s Away on Business,” Spencer Hall, Every Day Should Be Saturday

George Teague, college football and big thoughts.

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Ben Montgomery

Montgomery is an enterprise reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, and he lives in Tampa.


“If I Die Young,” Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times

“The Guiltless Pleasure,” Rick Bragg, Gourmet

“A Lot To Lose,” Tony Rehagen, Indianapolis Monthly

“The Shepard’s Lamb,” Danielle Paquette, Indiana University Daily Student

“Voice of America,” by Coozledad, rurritable

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Writer David Hill: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

David Hill writes Fading the Vig for McSweeney’s, writes about basketball for Negative Dunkalectics, writes sketch comedy for The Charlies, and starting next month will write a monthly column for Grantland. He is on Twitter at @davehill77.

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“Too Much Information,” John Jeremiah Sullivan, GQ

John Jeremiah Sullivan wrote many notable things in 2011. I chose to highlight this review of The Pale King for two reasons. First because everyone else has recommended the Disneyland story and the story about his house. Second because it is actually a nice bit of writing and it is fascinating in the way that it hits home how much David Foster Wallace has left an impact on a generation of writers, John Jeremiah Sullivan included. An impact that I think is perhaps both good and bad, but one that the jury will likely be out on for a long time. 

“The Garden of Good and Evil,” Katie Baker, Grantland

I have no idea if it is possible to love this piece as much as I do if you don’t love the Knicks. I mean really love the Knicks, as in cried after Game 5 of the 1999 NBA Finals love the Knicks. What I do know is that Katie Baker loves the Knicks the way I love the Knicks and this post mortem on this past season was, in my mind, a fitting and touching tribute to the team I invested far too much emotional energy and actual time this year. 

“The Art of the Body Shot,” Chris Jones, Grantland

Chris Jones is the best writer in the game right now hands down. Anything he writes is worthy of a list like this. This particular piece, however, is worth your time even if you aren’t much of a boxing fan. I read a lot of boxing writing this year—a lot. This was the single standout piece of writing on boxing I read all year. It made me feel like maybe boxing has life in it still yet, and if so perhaps writers like Chris Jones have more time to carry on a tradition of beautiful boxing prose that was handed to them by writers like James Baldwin and Norman Mailer. If so I have no doubt that Chris Jones won’t let them down.  

“In the Wake of Protest: One Woman’s Attempt to Unionize Amazon,” Vanessa Veselka, The Atlantic

I can tell you from first-hand experience as a union organizer that this piece accurately captures the utter hopelessness, intense fear, and emotional overload that workers who try to organize unions in America today must deal with. This story was heartbreaking but also righteous and in the end I feel like she arrives at exactly the right conclusions. It isn’t just about how a generation of workers who are self-absorbed and overly concerned about their self expression are an obstacle to class consciousness. It also makes the point that whether companies like Amazon are anti-union or not is irrelevant. Companies like Amazon that fight unions do so because they are essentially anti-worker and for me at least there is no nuance or complexity to it, it is just that simple.  

“Manhattan in Middle Age,” Elizabeth Gumport, This Recording

I discovered Elizabeth Gumport’s writing this year through a mutual friend and since have read everything she has written. She’s a wonderfully talented writer and thinker who I hope to see even more from in 2012. In this piece she looks at the life of Dawn Powell in New York City and talks about growing old in a city surrounded by the young. It is a subject I’ve thought about and talked about a lot this year as I adjust to my life as a father and try to walk in two worlds at once—that of my youth and that of my future—all the while knowing that eventually I will have to step completely over into one at the expense of the other. 

BONUS TRACK

“The Day Never Ended,” Everyone, Free Darko

Not really a longread but worth noting on this list of the best of 2011. This was the last post on Free Darko, a never-ending parade of goodbyes and thank yous and memories and glass-raising praise for the blog that was the inspiration for so many good things and the grandfather of so many great things yet to come. How we write, how we write about sports, how we think about sports, the way we write and communicate and build community on the Internet—for myself and I’d guess many other people Free Darko made a singular transformational impact. 

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

Comedy is also an industry of paying dues: Many long-time performers regard their first ten years as a kind of clueless wandering, and veteran comics tend to treat newbies like replacement troops: They are young, dumb, and could be gone soon, so it’s best to wait till they survive a while before learning their names. This is all to say that the term “comic” is subjective and nebulous, and even geographically variable: larger cities, with their heightened competition for stage time, are famous for relegating working comics from smaller markets like the Midwest or Florida back to open-mic status, causing many visitors to experience a kind of outraged existential crisis. When two comics meet for the first time, they act like dogs sniffing each other’s butts, asking loaded questions like, “You been doing it long?” or “You been busy?”

“Standup Comity.” — Steve Macone, The Morning News

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