The Astros Game Today: A Tragicomedy in Nine Innings, Brought to You by Planetary Melodrama Houston, Texas—population 2.3 million, humidity 100%, probability of existential dread steadily rising. While the locals shuffle into Minute Maid Park to watch grown millionaires in pajamas swat cowhide spheres, the rest of the planet quietly wonders whether this is the…
Lorenzo Musetti, the 22-year-old Italian who looks like he strolled off a Fellini set with a racquet instead of a cigarette, has become the latest reminder that global tennis is now a geopolitical chessboard played on acrylic. Last month in Monte Carlo, Musetti dispatched world No. 1 Novak Djokovic with the same languid shrug one…
JACKSONVILLE, Florida – While the rest of the planet debates whether the Arctic will melt or merely relocate to the Mediterranean next summer, the Jacksonville Jaguars have quietly published a depth chart that, in its own small way, mirrors the global order: a thin blue line of starters propped up by an underfunded reserve army,…
Rosie O’Donnell, the Human Rorschach Test No One Asked For By our correspondent in the cheap seats of the global amphitheater PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and the Hudson, the name “Rosie O’Donnell” has become a kind of international litmus paper, turning one color for Americans who still think Twitter is a town square, another for…
Miley Cyrus: The Last American Export Still Clearing Customs By the time you read this, Miley Cyrus has already twerked, tongue-lolled, and power-balladed her way through another cultural checkpoint. Somewhere between Berlin’s Berghain and Bangkok’s rooftop infinity pools, the former Disney Channel tax write-off has become the global West’s most reliable soft-power delivery system—one glitter…
The Saints Depth Chart as Global Rorschach Test By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (in exile, again) NEW ORLEANS—Somewhere between the beignet grease and the humidity you can still taste Hurricane Katrina’s ghost, the New Orleans Saints released their 2024 depth chart. On the surface it’s a tidy list of 53 men arranged like toy soldiers:…
Naomi Osaka Turns 26: A Global Birthday in the Age of Perpetual Crises By Dave’s Locker International Desk TOKYO—Somewhere between North Korea’s latest missile tantrum and the IMF’s revised “we’re-all-screwed” growth forecast, Naomi Osaka blew out 26 candles last week. That’s 26 revolutions around a sun that, according to the IPCC, now feels like a…
Dave’s Locker, International Desk – Seoul, San Diego, and the Sovereign Republic of Highlight Reels In a world where supply-chain shortages, crypto-crashes, and the slow-motion implosion of liberal democracy compete for headline space, Ha-seong Kim has done something subversive: he has become quietly, stubbornly excellent. The 28-year-old South Korean infielder is currently turning double plays…
High Potential, Season 2: A Bureaucratic Fairy Tale for Our Disenchanted Planet Dave’s Locker – International Desk (with the windows bolted shut) The algorithmic oracle known as Disney+ has decreed that “High Potential”—a show whose very title sounds like an HR euphemism for “over-promoted intern”—will return for a second season. Cue the synchronized sighs of…
The Buffalo Bills depth chart—an innocuous PDF that drops every August like a tax notice—has quietly become the Rosetta Stone for twenty-first-century geopolitics. To the untrained eye it’s just a list of large men arranged by jersey number, but to anyone who has watched civilization lurch from crisis to crisis, it reads like a classified…
The San Francisco Giants—yes, those orange-clad technocrats of Oracle Park—published their latest depth chart this week, and the planet promptly resumed its slow spin toward Armageddon. From the smog-choked skyline of Shenzhen to the moldy basements of Leeds, analysts parsed whether Tyler Fitzgerald really is the everyday shortstop or merely a placeholder until Marco Luciano’s…
José Altuve, the 5-foot-6 defibrillator to baseball’s collective ego, has become a geopolitical Rorschach test—proof that the planet can still unify around something, provided that something is arguing about a man who can’t reach the top shelf at Carrefour. From Caracas to Copenhagen, the diminutive second baseman is discussed less as athlete and more as…
