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Not long ago I woke up in the middle of the night, television on, sound muted. A film was on HBO, ”House of 1000 Corpses”, from 2003. The plot, as laid out on IMDb: “Two teenage couples traveling across the backwoods of Texas searching for urban legends of serial killers end up as prisoners of a bizarre and sadistic backwater family of serial killers.”
What ensued was an uninterrupted barrage of violence, sadism, torture, agony, blood and twisted limbs. It was so off the chart there could be no chart. Did I turn the channel? No. I waited to see how each scene would outdo the last in psychosis. Which is what director Rob Zombie intended, no doubt. Zombie was an awful musician who transitioned seamlessly to tasteless film director. Read more... (211 words, estimated 51 secs reading time)
This photo of Augie Favazza says everything about the St. Louis Cardinals and their epic World Series championship.
 Augie Favazza He grew up in the same neighborhood as Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola – The Hill. He was a graduate of Southwest High, and the University of Missouri (B.J., 1973), and went on to become sports editor of the Portland Press Herald.
Now he splits the year between Old Orchard Beach and St. Petersburg – and works as an accreditation consultant to cosmetology schools. But he still has family in St. Louis, and his heart still pumps Cardinal red.
Permanent link to this post (101 words, 1 image, estimated 24 secs reading time)
Sure, it sounds glamorous. Covering the Celtics for the Boston Herald, hobnobbing with the likes of Mike Gorman and Gary Washburn, is the stuff of journalism school fantasy.
 Steve Bulpett But Steve Bulpett, who has had the beat since 1985, is here to tell you that it exacts a physical and emotional toll. Physical, from long hours, irregular sleep and exercise, and poor diet. Emotional, from the adrenaline high of the season and the inevitable and spooky decompression after it ends.
The toll on a writer’s personal life is another subject altogether. Bulpett, 54, says he has been “close to the alter a few times – three arrests, no convictions” in this candid interview. And though he does not disclose his favorite haunts on Boston’s North Shore, sources say he can be found at Red Rock Bistro in Swampscott on weekends.
Permanent link to this post (141 words, 1 image, estimated 34 secs reading time)
Sports journalism at the high school and community level often is about more than the sport. I was reminded of this in reporting a story about Akoy Agau, star center for Omaha Central High School, who fled his native Sudan as a little boy.
 Akoy Agau The story was supposed to be about how students of Agau’s era understood the 1960s, as depicted in my book, “The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central: High School Basketball at the ’68 Racial Divide”.
But my reporting took me in a different direction, toward Central’s “persistently lowest-achieving” status under state and federal No Child Left Behind standards, and the tangle of politics behind it.
Here’s the story for the Oxford African-American Studies Center.
Permanent link to this post (120 words, 1 image, estimated 29 secs reading time)
I was prepared to dislike Eric Raskin. After all, he wrote an oral history for Grantland about the 1987 mega-fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler and somehow managed to ignore the only book solely about the fight. Which happens to be my book, “Sorcery at Caesars: Sugar Ray’s Marvelous Fight”.
So I sent a note and a copy of ‘Sorcery’ to Raskin. He returned an e-mail with an apology and an explanation that he had never heard about my book. Not a surprise – most haven’t – I’m still waiting for it to catch fire among the two billion people in China, the Indian sub-continent, and Omaha. Even I forget about it – which is not to say it’s forgettable. It just missed the zeitgeist that seems to be tethered to Bill Simmons – the guy who tabbed Raskin for Grantland. You might say Simmons has a monopoly – Occupy Grantland! – on the zeitgeist. Until it moves on – which is a funny thing about zeitgeist. Read more... (285 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)
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Now Released! 
"Four decades after George Wallace ignited a race riot in Omaha, Steve Marantz goes home to tell the story of a high school basketball team and its tragic star. A heartbreaking look inside the lives of white and black students fighting and falling in love as they grow up amid historic upheaval."
-- Ian Thomsen, Sports Illustrated
All information here.
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