Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia—home of the Phillies—has, improbably, become the planet’s most honest geopolitical forum. While the United Nations keeps its microphones politely muted and Davos serves canapés to the same 200 people, 44,000 Philadelphians gather 81 times a year to scream unprintable truths about the human condition at nine men in red pinstripes. The…
The World’s Most Lethal Dad: How “Sakamoto Days” Became the Planet’s Shared Guilty Pleasure By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk In an era when every other headline reads like a rejected Black Mirror script—“Drone Swarm Delivers Groceries, Also Your Existential Dread”—it takes a special sort of cultural artifact to unite the planet’s exhausted scrollers. Enter “Sakamoto…
Randy Jackson and the Global Metaphor Nobody Asked For By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Atlantic The name Randy Jackson pings differently depending on your passport stamp. In Jakarta, he’s the bass player who once soundtracked a coup-thwarting disco night in ’83. In Berlin techno basements, he’s the punchline to a…
Texans vs Buccaneers: How a Floridian Squall and a Lone-Star Dust-Up Became the World’s Weirdest Diplomatic Rorschach Test ———————————————————————————————————————— Rome had its gladiators, London its football hooligans, and now—because history insists on punchlines—planet Earth has the Houston Texans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, two professional American football teams whose meeting on a Sunday evening in NRG…
The Curious Case of Paul Ovenden: How One Man’s Mid-Life Crisis Became a Global Parable By Our Correspondent, still recovering from the last press-trip “per diem” LONDON—If you blinked last week you probably missed the latest entry in the catalogue of Anglo-Saxon males who confuse LinkedIn with a therapy couch. Meet Paul Ovenden, 47, former…
Dubai, 6 March – Somewhere between the opulent skyscrapers of the UAE and the 24-hour news cycle that still pretends to care about associate-nation cricket, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka played what the ICC politely calls an “official T20I.” The rest of the planet, busy doom-scrolling about inflation or the latest palace intrigue in Washington,…
Lois Boisson: The Global Thirst Nobody Asked For PARIS—Every morning, somewhere between the Place de la République and the Boulevard Périphérique, a refrigerated tanker the color of a bruised sky rumbles past the homeless encampments and the €9 flat-white brigade. Inside is the newest French export that absolutely no one requested: Lois Boisson, a sparkling,…
PARIS—Somewhere between a croissant crumb and a NATO communiqué, Jennifer Coolidge has become a trans-Atlantic bargaining chip. The White Lotus matriarch, once America’s favorite ditzy aunt, now operates as soft-power currency in every capital that still pretends to care about culture. Berlin DJs remix her sighs into techno; Lagos hair-braiders sell “Tanya waves”; Tokyo teens…
Jimmy Johnson: How One Man’s Hair Helped the World Pretend the 1990s Never Ended By Our Man in the Hotel Bar, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic If you whisper “Jimmy Johnson” in a Floridian sports bar, the patrons will instinctively look up at the nearest flat-screen, half-expecting a Fox NFL Sunday graphic to explode into view….
Sunday Night Football: The Imperial Broadcast That Keeps the Planet on the Clock By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic LONDON—At 20:30 Eastern Standard Time—roughly the moment Lagos power cuts flip the grid, Sydney commuters are lining up for their second Monday coffee, and a Berlin U-Bahn driver wonders why the…
Denver, Colorado – Somewhere between the thin alpine air and the thicker wallets of corporate sponsors, the Broncos played another game last night. This alone is hardly news; the sun also rises, and the Broncos also lose. Yet from the vantage point of a planet simultaneously on fire and drowning in its own plastic, the…
BARCELONA VS VALENCIA – A CLÁSICO FOR AN AGE THAT CAN’T AFFORD CLÁSICOS By Dave’s foreign correspondent, filing from a hotel mini-bar somewhere on the Iberian peninsula The planet is busy stockpiling canned goods for the next micro-apocalypse, yet roughly 95,000 citizens will still cram into Spotify Camp Nou tonight to watch 22 millionaires chase…
