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James Gandolfini Had A Lot In His Bag
This piece was originally published in The Small Bow on Aug. 7. If you like it, consider subscribing . He was always referring to himself as a “guy like me,” in a baffled sort of way, like how the fuck did a guy like me pull this whole thing off? And part of what James Gandolfini meant was the son of the bricklayer and the lunch lady, this King Konging ex-jock with a neck like a paint can, a guy from New Jersey, where they were not what you might call beautiful but were magnificent. They...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Indianapolis Colts
Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: The Mayonnaise City Colts. Your 2025 record: 8-9, but that only hints at the story of the 2025 Colts, who were 8-2 going into their bye and 0-7 after it. I’ve seen SpaceX rockets with better trajectories.
Fenix Flexin Puts Bankrolls On The Table And AI On The Charts
Welcome to Listening Habits , a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently. Music's AI revolution has arrived, somewhat ... maybe. And naturally, it has come for rap first. This isn't the kind of trumped-up thing like what has been foretold in the roughly 100 weirdly written profiles about "AI actress" Tilly Norwood, a thing you've probably already forgotten about if you ever even heard about it in the first place. No, AI has been implemented in music...
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the two women I overheard whispering about how they wanted to fuck Adam Bede, in one of my undergrad classes; the student of mine who disclosed that he loved The Hou...
Craig Kimbrel Can’t Quit
"On one hand I resent it," Tim Layana told a reporter from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel while watching a 44-year-old Steve Carlton throw a bullpen session at Yankees spring training in 1989. Layana, who was then 25 and had just reached Triple-A, would pitch in three big-league seasons for the Reds and Giants; Carlton was 44, and had won four Cy Young Awards and 329 games. He was a veteran of 24 MLB seasons, an easy Hall of Famer, and identifiable as fully cooked from a hundred paces. The ...
Did The A’s Infect The Red Sox With Whatever Is Wrong With Them?
It is not news to you that the West Sacramento Athletics are deeply un-good. Even when they led the AL West in April and May, they somehow managed to do so while maintaining a solidly negative run differential. But since their last day at .500, on June 19, they have been, by both advanced and less-advanced metrics, Galactically Ass. Their three best hitters, Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, and Brent Rooker, are hurt, their pitching struggles to be shambolic, and as a result they have lost 35 of t...
Lakers Owner Mark Walter Suddenly Sells Team Amid Federal Investigation
Out of nowhere, and after only a few short days of negotiations, Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger have agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter for a reported record price of $12.5 billion. Every part of that sentence is wild, especially given the recent financial maneuverings of Walter and Kushner. Let's start with Walter, who bought the Lakers in June 2025 for $10 billion. Walter also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and has turned them into an organization so hyper-competent that it ...
Eventually Everyone Needs An Axe Guy
All of us have that one friend who fully commits to the bit. And frankly, there is no better time in your life for taking new hijinks for an extended walk than the college years. But what if the bit was ancient Nordic weaponry? Our friend of a friend today sets off to college with the axe of her dreams in hand—we do mean an actual axe—and together they forge an extravagant bond. She find community and minor fame, even love. But her boyfriend’s fondness for her axe quickly becomes excessive...
Will My Only Child Be A Weirdo?
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas , where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at [email protected] . This week, Ray tackles a question about the merits of having an only child.
Trans Rights And Lesbian Lefts, With Maya Goldberg-Safir
This week on Nothing But Respect , we welcomed back Maya Goldberg-Safir, one of my favorite WNBA writers and thinkers. Maya runs Rough Notes and has written a handful of amazing Defector stories , and I consider her to be the best person covering the history of women's basketball. On this episode, we talked about Maya's time at WNBA All-Star weekend in Chicago ( which she wrote about for Bustle ), the Sophie Cunningham situation, and the critical importance of understanding the past few dec...
All Day I Dream Of Curry Fries
Let me cut right to it: Why can’t I get curry fries over here? Look, I just got back from a work trip to Dublin (where everybody says "Look" to start a sentence), and curry fries are weighing heavy. The trip went as swell as possible. I not only got to cover an all-timer of a football match , but also had my fill of curry chips, in the local parlance, just as I'd hoped and dreamed. Good god, they’re good. And they’re everywhere in the Irish capital. But upon returning, I got peeved by th...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Tampa Bay Buccaneers. https://bsky.app/profile/profootballtalk.bsky.social/post/3mrurzuufhk2u
‘The Cruelest Game’ Examines Tennis As Torture
Professional tennis has a way of breeding misery. It begins with the dream of reaching the No. 1 ranking, but almost everybody falls short. Those who find the promised land feel puzzlingly empty once there. Familial and coaching roles blur. Prodigious children bear the responsibility of feeding and enriching their families. The mechanism through which matches are decided is a torturous maze disguised as a scoring system. Tune in and you may see grown adults reaming out their support staff, fam...
With The Power Of AI, Information Can Pour Straight Through Your Skull And Onto The Ground Without Ever Slowing
Reading: What is it? Why does anyone do it? Can anyone at Axios do it? No. Maybe that is why they write like that. When you read a book, the stuff in the book goes into your mind, and your mind assembles all of the stuff into imagery and thoughts and feelings, and alchemizes meaning from it. A person reasonably could consider this "what's good about reading," or "the point of reading," or "buddy that's actually just ... what reading is ," but that all assumes that your reason for reading an...
Everybody Loves Big Boy
My name is Noelle, and I'm a fan of the world's largest operating steam locomotive. I used to think this was a unique fact about me. But recently our tiny fandom has exploded. Big Boy, as he’s called—Christian name: Union Pacific No. 4014—retired in 1961 when diesel-electric engines made cumbersome steam trains unnecessary. In recent years, he has emerged from hibernation for heritage tours out west, so his fans can see his 1.2 million-pound body and human-sized wheels up close. And this year,...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Baltimore Ravens
Some people are fans of the Baltimore Ravens. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Baltimore Ravens. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your Team: Baltimore Ravens. Your 2025 record: 8-9, with all that implies.
Three Vaccines Is Less Vaccine Than One Vaccine, According To Donald Trump
On Monday, Donald Trump doubled down on his weird and eugenic obsession with autism by signing an executive order calling to split up the MMR vaccine for children into three separate shots given in three separate appointments. "I wanna find what's going on with autism," Trump said in a press conference held upon signing the executive order, in case his intentions were not totally clear. He then proceeded to estimate the volumes of vaccines with an inscrutable measuring system, referring to "va...
Red Sox Stumble Into Rules Review Hell, Emerge With Inconsequential Run
In the hypothetical situation in which a fan is attending a baseball game in person and has to wait for a video review to be completed, what is the length of time the review can last before she might turn murderous? Five minutes? Ten? The umpires in Monday night's game between the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays put this to the test with a 15-minute review of a baserunning debacle by the Red Sox that ended with the visiting team being awarded a run in the end. But let's start from the ...
Charli XCX Made A Beautiful Monument To Impermanence
SAN FRANCISCO — Charli XCX had a cold. You could only tell after five songs and one costume change, when the backup dancers and full backing band briefly disappeared so she could perform "Track 10," the furthest she reached into her back catalogue. Alone, she sounded a little shredded, and would occasionally let the backing track sing for her. Probably this would sink other would-be headliners, or at least meaningfully affect the performance, but no, whatever mild illness Charli was contending...
American Football Is Still Making Magic
The band American Football released their fourth self-titled LP in May. They are no longer the band they were in the late '90s, when their debut EP and album somehow developed a cult status that has endured to this day. Today, they are a middle-aged band making a much more adult imagining of emo music. LP4 is soft, wistful, jazzy indie-rock music with singer Mike Kinsella's deep and tender vibrato working on an ASMR level as well as a lyrical one. It's one of the best releases of the year, spe...
The Sports Idiot Is Dead, Long Live The Sports Idiot
The 1990s and 2000s were great decades for the sports idiot. Movies like Talladega Nights, Dodgeball, Kingpin , and others belong to this subset of the sports comedy, one that explores the unique problem of being good at sports and bad at everything else. With the help of an older mentor, often but not always played by an older Black man, and a supportive best friend even dumber than him, the sports idiot comes up against more threatening kinds of men—richer, meaner, or both—and triumphs. ...
Cathy Engelbert Is Doing The Job She Was Hired To Do
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you're at it . Today, we're talking about butter parties, severance packages, finding new hobbies, and more. Before we go any further, I demand you give it up to Albert Burneko for so capably filling my shoes here a week ago. Truly, Bert is the king of kings. Your letters: Tom:
While Wearing An Orange Wig And A Big Red Foam Nose, Fabrizio Romano Insists He’s Not A Clown
If you are a soccer fan of any real commitment, then surely you've seen last week's news that Real Madrid officially landed Ivorian winger (and former Florida high school student!) Yan Diomandé, prying him away from RB Leipzig with the considerable leverage exerted by €125 million. If you followed along with the transfer saga as it unfolded, you may have been surprised by how long the deal took to complete, considering that all credible reports said it has been all but tied up for almost two w...
Melon’s Odyssey On The Black Market For Life-Saving Cat Medicine
For a month this spring, Melon was truly living up to her name. She had always been a round cat but never quite this gourd-like—small neck billowing out to a majestic corpulence. This sudden plump came with an attitude. She had abandoned her sweet old habits: sitting on the toilet seat to watch me shower, running back and forth across my apartment until she panted, and leaping on my back to scope out unreachable shelves. I chalked this up to the fact that Melon, now 4 years old, was growing up...
Transactions, August 10
Defector is proud to announce the addition of a new guy. Timothy Faust has joined us as our Director of Revenue. You might know Tim as a previous Defector contributor and the author of a legendary blog post, but in this role he will be entirely focused on data, revenue projections, and all sorts of…
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