If it wasn’t already clear by the first few weeks of isolation, it’s certainly obvious now: hanging out with your pals over webcam sucks shit compared to hanging out in person. A video chat featuring any more than five or six people invites chaos, with nobody sure when it’s their turn to monologue; body language is difficult if not impossible to read; quieter side conversations are non-existent; and even the act of getting up to grab a refill or use the bathroom feels awkward. It is simply unfeasible, no matter how badly we might want to try, to recreate the feeling of casually chatting in a bar or cafe over the internet.
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This is Point B. It’s a teleportation love story and you can buy it starting today. As it stands presently, you can only get Point B as an eBook from the dreaded Amazon, but the paperback edition should be available there shortly, perhaps by the end of the week. Should you dare to violate social distancing with packaged materials (my wife and I have a whole system for dealing with such contraband), you will indeed be able to soon get a hard copy of this bad boy and then tell me that there’s a typo in it.
Read moreThank you for your continued support of Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog. We’ll be here all week, folks.
Climbing was one of the sports slated to make its Olympic debut in Tokyo this year, though because of the coronavirus pandemic, the opportunity for sportscasters to make strained comparisons to Spider-Man has gone the way of hanging out in bars and the feeling of joy. Climbers will have to wait (at least) one year to go to the Games.
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Art by Chris Thompson
Although right now people are supposed to stay inside as much as they can, dogs still have to go on regular walks in order to stretch their legs, as well as pee and poop. Please use good judgment when taking those pooches outside. Don’t let them off-leash in the park so they can play with a football.
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Illustration by Tom Ley
During this extended bout of quarantine it has occurred to me that what I truly lack is not hobbies, entertainment, or contact with my friends. What I need is more stuff to look at.
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Illustration: Chris Thompson
On March 29, 2015, Rusev came into WrestleMania 31 as the United States champion. He rode in on a damn tank.
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Courtesy of the Chargers
We’re still pretending there’s gonna be an NFL season, which means that there’s still gonna be a draft this week and that teams such as the Chargers, Browns, and Bucs are all unveiling “new” uniforms to get fans creaming their jeans for the season ahead. It’s a new team. A new start. A new ERA.
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Art by Chris Thompson
If you wanted to watch live sports during the last weekend of March, you had two or three options, depending upon where you stand on competitive gaming. This was well into the coronavirus pandemic and weeks after every major sports league around the world ground to a halt, which left the world a total of four Belarusian Premier League games, each played because that country’s president seems to think the disease doesn’t exist since he can’t see it; a handful of esports matches played online; and a UFC-broadcasted grappling card held in a vacant grain silo in Oregon. This weekend, you can still watch Overwatch or terrible soccer. You will still be able to catch some more grappling, too.
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Illustration by my brother, who is 14
In January, when her mentor died suddenly in a helicopter crash, Sabrina Ionescu was cast as a character in the Kobe Bryant Extended Universe, and the final games of what was an electric, singular college career at Oregon were parsed not really as basketball contests, but as weird exercises in numerology. Her 24th career triple-double, eight points in a half, that sort of thing.
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