EWu

I 've been watching sports now for over twenty years. Large, endless chunks of those times are forever forgotten, possibly completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. So why do it? Because of moments, or if we're lucky, periods, that make all the banality in between completely worth it. Because of series like the 2013 NBA Finals. Because of athletes like LeBron James. Because of legacies like the Duncan-era Spurs. Because it's all just a microcosm of life, rife w/ allegories to heroes, love, courage, loyalty, victory, defeat, redemption, death, etc. Because for us guys, it's the only way we know how to experience, feel, express all the hard questions w/o having to be annoyingly vulnerable. Trace a man's relationship to his sports and you trace his character. *** "Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war." -David F...

I t is late in the 3rd quarter of a Knicks-Heat game. Ray Allen brings the ball past the half-court line. LeBron is standing at the northeast corner, surveying, as the Knicks defense morphs into their half-court match-ups. And then LeBron accelerates, sensing an opening developing in the lane like an elite NFL running back, swooping down from that NE corner in a gear I'm not sure anyone else in the NBA possess, takes the hand off from Allen, and in one dribble and two steps goes airborne, right arm extended and cocked over his head, and dunks the basketball with so much force it metaphorically blows my hair back. I recoil and cringe in that clichéd, exaggerated way sports fans do when they see something sick (just sick!) happen live. It is the most ferocious dunk I've seen this season. The technical name of the dunk is called the Tomahawk Jam. But this was a level above. This was Thor-swinging-his-hammer fierce. This was  Gregor -separating-a-torso-with-his-broadsword v...

“I knew my parents would still love me if I didn’t get into Bronx Science,” he said. “But they would be very disappointed.” *** M an. I hated those fucking test prep classes as a kid. Hated the stack of practice exam books that, if stacked upon one another, would be taller than me. Hated practicing piano and clarinet and violin. Hated Kumon. Hated the red welts across my palms inflicted by my dad's ruler when I screwed up a problem set. Hated being made to feel like scum when coming home with a B+. These are the ginormous buttocks of racial stereotype jokes and I'll laugh as loud as the next guy at 'em... now. But back then? It made my stomach churn and made me want to vomit and run away from home. If I had a choice, I would've quit a million times over because I'm a lazy idiot at heart. Luckily, I was born into a disciplined family, so I didn't have that choice to quit. And so my "reward" was getting into good schools that summarily led to bett...

T he stage was lit green. Fiona Apple came out, paused at the baby grand piano, took a swig from her water bottle, and waved to us. Her wave was strangely, endearingly child-like. It was quick and successive and torqued from her elbow rather than from her wrist. She was wearing a long zebra striped dress, slit up to her thighs on the right and clinched at the waist by a thin pink belt. Fiona looked about 90 lbs, gaunt, eyes large and sunken into her skull. Under the green stage lights, she looked sickly pastel. I, and probably 75% of the audience, felt an overwhelming urge to rush up to her and wrap a blanket around her frail shoulders and feed her chicken soup and multivitamins. But then the drums kicked in and Blake Mills's guitar spat out the opening distorted chords for Fast As You Can  and thus began a riveting, unforgettable 90 minute set on a Wednesday night at Terminal 5. *** F iona Apple rocketed to pop stardom in 1996 with her hit single Criminal  ...

O f course, it was inevitable. Sometimes it's fun to root against the inevitable, to hold it off, to believe maybe the inevitable is not inevitable. But of course, in the end, the inevitable is inevitable. There is something that feels fundamentally right, poetic even, with the Miami Heat winning the 2012 NBA Championship. However, this story is LeBron's. The Prodigy, The Natural, The Can't Miss. He achieves some success early, but never wins the big enchilada. He makes a couple of truly boneheaded PR mistakes, but if that's his worst sin, i.e. preternatural swagger, he's practically a saint in a league filled with thugs and selfish players and coach killers. He gets absolutely pilloried by the press and by basketball fans outside of Miami's zip codes. And I don't care how thick your skin is, how rich you are, how big a mansion you buy to hide in, you'll feel the pain, the sting of hate. He lashes back. "All the people that were rooting on me to ...

"I think I'm getting a little psyched out," Leo said. It is 4:50pm on a muggy Saturday in late May. In 10 minutes is the 4th annual Go! Go! Curry! eating championship. Leo is my roommate and the biggest eater I know. Not biggest as in most gluttonous, biggest as in capacity-wise. We all know someone like that. The appointed human garbage can at dinners. For years, I and our friends have encouraged Leo to enter these now ubiquitous eating competitions. Clearly we all saw potential going to waste as he regularly cleaned up our leftovers at restaurants like a reverse Pez dispenser. Today is the finals. Leo breezed through the qualifiers, wolfing down two plates of curry in one minute eleven seconds, good for fourth place where only the top four advance. At stake is $500 for first place. To the others: six minutes of spotlight, a pat on the back, and YouTube infamy (and a free early dinner). "These guys are all professional eaters! They all have a page listing the...

T here were seven of us that night at Birreria, the beer garden at the rooftop of Mario Batali's sprawling Eataly market. And there was a moment that, when it happened, stirred within me a sense of contentment so deep I wanted to freeze time and writhe in it like a pig in mud on a searing August afternoon. I wonder if the feeling was felt mutually across the party; I suspect not, for we each have our own distinct demons we wrestle with, and thus, find these rare flashes of solace wholly idiosyncratic. The moment was triggered not by any one thing or person or word. It snuck up on me like a gust that hits you as you round the corner of a street around tall buildings. There were seven of us and we sat at a rectangular table: three facing three on one axis, and one at the head. The plates on the table, an assortment of cold cuts, mushrooms, and cheeses, were largely consumed. Glasses of wine, Langhe Rossos and Friuli Biancos, in various progress of consumption, surrounded the chin...