Headline from the Apocalypse’s Sports Desk: Humanity, having successfully weaponized climate, currency, and cat memes, now turns its restless gaze to—of all things—UCLA football. Somewhere between the melting Arctic and the latest crypto-cult, the search for a new Bruins coach has become, improbably, a geopolitical Rorschach test. Let us begin in São Paulo, where a…
The Giants Game, as the English-speaking world insists on calling it, returned again last week to remind us that even in an era of orbital supply chains and near-instantaneous financial collapse, humanity still finds comfort in watching very large men in very tight trousers try to move an egg-shaped object a few yards at a…
Wiz Khalifa: The Pittsburgh Piper Who Convinced the Planet to Stay High and Keep Smiling By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Somewhere Over the International Dateline The first thing you notice, boarding any long-haul flight that still tolerates in-flight entertainment, is that Wiz Khalifa has become the unofficial soundtrack of altitude. Somewhere between the…
In the grand, gaudy casino of global baseball, where every slider is a geopolitical statement and every fastball a referendum on national virility, the name Luis Castillo keeps popping up like a bad penny—or, depending on your passport, a really good one. From the aluminum-roofed ballparks of the Dominican winter league to the corporate cathedrals…
Pumas, the World’s Sleekest Bureaucrats By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a press buffet and a UN climate summit The puma—alias cougar, mountain lion, panther, or, if you’re feeling dramatic, “ghost cat”—has quietly upgraded from regional apex predator to unwitting geopolitical consultant. While humanity argues over carbon credits and TikTok bans, Puma concolor has been…
Channing Tatum, Demon Slayer: When Hollywood Abs Meets Tokyo Yokai By Our Correspondent in the Existential Lobby of Terminal 3, Narita The first reports came from a 24-hour ramen joint in Shibuya at 3:12 a.m. local time: Channing Tatum—yes, the human protein shake from Alabama—had been spotted in a kendo dojo, sweating through a montage…
Mazatlán vs. Pumas: A Carnival of Collapse Played Out on Two Continents By Dave’s Locker International Desk The Pacific tide rolls in over Mazatlán’s malecón just as the tide of public patience rolls out for Club Mazatlán and their perennial tormentors, Pumas UNAM. On paper it’s merely another mid-table Liga MX fixture, a Wednesday-night obligation…
Aric Almirola: The Cuban-American Whose 200-mph Commute Became a Global Parable By the time Aric Almirola eased his No. 10 Stewart-Haas Ford into retirement at the end of last season, he had logged exactly 460 starts in NASCAR’s top flight—roughly the distance from Havana to Pyongyang if you could drive on water and had a…
John Daly’s Global Hangover: How a Chain-Smoking Arkansan Became the Patron Saint of Every Nation That Hates Rules PARIS—At 7:12 a.m., while the rest of France was nursing a civilizational migraine over pension reform, John Daly was already on the breakfast patio of Le Bristol, Diet Coke in one hand, Marlboro in the other, telling…
Noah Fifita and the Great Pacific Quarterback Pipeline: How a 5’10 Hawaiian Kid Became a Geopolitical Sleeper Agent By the time Noah Fifita dropped a 40-yard dime on national television last Saturday, three continents were already arguing about him on Reddit. That’s the new math of college football: one Samoan-Hawaiian kid from Anaheim who still…
Reds versus Athletics: A Global Bloodletting in Nine Innings By L. V. Carver, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Oakland Coliseum – that brutalist concrete sarcophagus where optimism goes to die – hosted another skirmish last night between the Cincinnati Reds and the Oakland Athletics, two teams whose combined payroll wouldn’t cover a junior diplomat’s bar tab…
Ryan Staub: The Accidental Everyman Who Proves the World Has Run Out of Actual News *International Desk, Dave’s Locker* — While the Arctic melts and billionaires race to Mars like toddlers fighting over the last cookie, humanity has collectively decided that Ryan Staub—a man whose primary achievement appears to be existing—is worthy of global contemplation….
