NFL Open Thread, Turtle-Racing Edition

Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway the other day, we saw Brennan’s, which proclaimed itself “Home of  Turtle Racing Since 1972,” complete with a flashing neon turtle line. Some internet research established that it is not only still the home to weekly turtle racing but is also the preeminent Broncos bar in Marina Del Ray. [Insert joke about Broncos offense since Peyton Manning became “Peyton Manning” and/or joke about AFC South divisional race here.] Still, unless you’re a Browns fan remember than your offense could always be worse.

Meanwhile, a couple of commenters have noted that Magary’s least influential list is out. Alas, he’s not really able to cite one of the most obvious candidates, “Most of Deadspin’s male editors” — it seems safe to say that both “C+ Econ 101 justifications for not bothering to vote will really stick it to neoliberalism” and “elaborate, ostentatious nose-holding before only with the very greatest reluctance voting for the very, very slightly less neoliberal of America’s two interchangeable neoliberal parties in a completely safe Democratic state like Pennsylvania” are genres that have not worn well. But it’s an entertaining list. Particularly recommended:

Billy Bush
This guy got $10 million to fuck off from Access Hollywood forever. We’re now living in a world where Billy Bush is worth $10 million to someone. How is that possible? I could replace Billy Bush with a fern and get the exact same ratings. At least the fern wouldn’t ask movie stars asinine questions about what it was like to work with Mandy Moore. And yet, consider the outcome for the two men involved in that pussy-grabbing video: Bush got $10 million, and Trump got elected president. We are so, so fucked.

Cameron Crowe
He was on this list last year for Aloha, but did you know he made a TV show this year? You probably forgot all about Roadies, but I didn’t. Perhaps you thought Vinyl was the nadir of shitty boomer music porn in 2016? Wrong! Look at this poster. Does ANYONE on that poster resemble an actual roadie to you? The average roadie weighs three bills and will spit on you if you get in the way of his rolling bass cabinet. Cameron Crowe should be banned for life from making any movie or TV show with a music theme. This is for his own good.

Can I interject here that while it’s at least watchable — thank you, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, R.I.P. — unlike Jerry McGuire or anything Crowe has done since, Almost Famous is hugely overrated?

Jonathan Safran-Foer
I’m gonna put aside the mixed (at best) reviews that Safran-Foer and get right to the emails. Remember the rumor that Safran-Foer left his wife in 2015 because he was madly in love with actress Natalie Portman—only he forgot to tell Portman this BEFORE ending his marriage and discovering the feeling wasn’t mutual? Well! This year, in a very literary PR stunt for the New York Times Magazine, Safran-Foer and Portman made public a bunch of the emails from their exchange, and they are a treasure trove of reciprocal, 21st century navel-gazing. They also somehow avoid mentioning any of the juicy stuff. Instead, we get a lot of this:

“Freedom might not be a prerequisite for the expression of passion—it helps, sometimes, not to be able to follow your instincts—but they are strongly intertwined. How do you think about freedom? When do you most strongly wish you had more of it? When do you most strongly wish you had less?”