Global Footnotes: How Jake Moody’s Right Foot Briefly Became a Geopolitical Talking Point by Our Man in the Cheap Seats For most of the planet, Jake Moody remains the sort of name that slides off the tongue like lukewarm tap water—forgettable, slightly metallic, gone before the swallow. Yet on 12 February 2024, somewhere between the…
The Ministry of Defense calls it “Reggie White,” which is either a nod to the late NFL evangelist or proof that someone in Procurement has a bleak sense of humor. Either way, the world now has a 27-ton bundle of American steel, rubber, and wounded optimism parked in a Polish forest, its paint scheme so…
The Empire’s Tennis Ball: How US Open Champions Quietly Rule the World By a correspondent who once got food poisoning at Arthur Ashe and still blames capitalism NEW YORK—Every September the United States dutifully stages its fortnightly imperial coronation disguised as a sports tournament. The US Open crowns a new sovereign of string and neon,…
Green Bay’s Roster Shuffle: A Cheesehead Saga Reverberating from Lagos to Lhasa By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent-at-Large (currently hiding in a Reykjavik bar where the Wi-Fi is stronger than most governments) If you think the annual reshuffling of the Green Bay Packers roster is just a provincial footnote in the American sports coliseum, congratulations—you have successfully…
From the Beltway to the Beijing Belt-and-Road—Trent Williams as Global Rorschach Test —————————————————————– PARIS — Somewhere between the 50-yard line and the International Date Line, Trent Williams ceased being merely the NFL’s most overqualified bodyguard and became a geopolitical inkblot: what you see in the San Francisco left tackle says more about your hemisphere than…
The Curious Case of Ben Johnson: How a Sprinter Still Outruns the World’s Moral High Ground By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk There are moments in global history that feel like cosmic punch-lines, and the fall of Ben Johnson is one of the few that keeps giving—like a re-gifted fruitcake laced with stanozolol. Thirty-six years…
Brandon Aiyuk and the Geopolitics of a Jersey Tantrum By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and a bistro that still pretends cigarettes are a food group, the name Brandon Aiyuk is being whispered like a dirty secret. To the French, who treat labor strikes as a…
The Eternal Burn of América vs. Deportivo Cali: A Global Parable Played in Yellow and Red Cali, Colombia – Somewhere between the salsa bars and the bulletproof-vest boutiques, two football clubs are re-enacting the Cold War in miniature, only with more choreography and fewer plausible denials. América de Cali and Deportivo Cali—nicknamed Los Diablos Rojos…
The Laver Cup lands each September like a first-class diplomatic junket masquerading as a tennis tournament: six Europeans, six non-Europeans, and a small mountain of carbon emissions converging on whichever city promised the fattest appearance fee this year. In 2024 it is Berlin’s turn to host the spectacle, which means the old Tempelhof runway—once used…
From the cheap seats of the global economy, few scoreboards flicker with more schadenfreude than the American League East standings. While the rest of the planet frets over tightening grain corridors, runaway currencies, and the slow-motion demolition of the Antarctic ice shelf, this five-club cabal on the eastern seaboard of the United States continues to…
i fought the law (and the law was wearing a bespoke Brioni suit) Geneva, 03:14 a.m. local—While most of the planet was doom-scrolling or pretending to sleep, a small army of negotiators in Hall 7 of the Palais des Nations quietly rewrote the operating system of global order. The phrase on everyone’s encrypted lips was…
Detroit, Michigan – In a city that once symbolised the industrial engine of the West and now mostly symbolises how engines seize when neglected for six decades, the Detroit Lions have unveiled yet another quarterback. The announcement landed on foreign wire services somewhere between the latest Sudan evacuation and the revelation that a Swiss banker…
