Golf — Basketball — Coronavirus — Books About Crime — 5/20/25

by Nate

Nate told a friend—partially in jest at the time but as he reflects on it there’s a lot more truth to it than he first thought—that these four topics are the only things he reads about online. This friend told him that, surely, there must be a website that speaks to these niche issues at the same time. WELL THERE IS NOW, BABY.

GOLF

Scottie Scheffler has won the PGA Championship! A couple of things to know about our guy:

• This is his fifteenth PGA event win before turning 29, which puts him on par with Tiger Fucking Woods. 
• He once got arrested for no good reason, resulting in a pretty funny police report where some cop had to give a monetary value for his pants. He ended up winning that tournament despite getting arrested.
• Every so often, he forgets how to putt. Imagine being the best at anything and just forgetting how to do one of the most important parts of it for a while. 
• He's an incredibly boring sweetheart who seemingly has no interior life or mental monologue. He is basically one of those "watch me live my boring 9-5 life" TikTok accounts, except he's the best golfer in the world. 

This event was boring, but congrats to Scottie and his Texas-ass wife.

BASKETBALL

By the time you read this, the Knicks and Pacers will have played their first game of the Eastern Conference Finals. This is a match-up that provides an intuitive spiritual alignment: no one can tell you who to root for in this instance, you already know in your heart who you want to win. Those among us who are impish spoilers, slaving for the heartless and pining for the underdog, even if that underdog is as boring as cardboard, and those among us who reach for the bright, flashy myths of times bygone; both crowds have their champion, both crowds will eventually be juiced by the mantis-like freaks of Oklahoma City.

CORONAVIRUS

We've all learned so much since the 'Vid. Seems fine now, doesn't it?

BOOKS ABOUT CRIME

It is good for the soul and the mind to occasionally read a book that is incomprehensible and, either through happenstance or specific application of craft, somewhat insane. One such novel is Vengeance Is Mine by presumed French person Marie NDiaye, a wonderful novel for people who believe that everyone is talking shit about them the very second they move out of earshot. The novel revolves around an attorney who is asked to defend a woman who has allegedly killed her children. The wrinkle here is that the lawyer believes she knows the alleged killer's husband, and that he is responsible for... something? Something that happened to the lawyer when she was young? But the lawyer cannot remember what the traumatic event was? Or if it was even him? Or if there was even a trauma?

The cascading confusion and self-doubt that descends on the attorney as the book goes on is shared by the reader. Turns out neither of us know what's going on or why things are happening. The novel doesn't even really reach a conclusion as much as it just sort of ends, yet its noble defiance of giving any character clarity or obvious direction is compelling, even if it is also confounding. Read this one when you have a headache.

INDIE ROCK

As a culture, we must move past slowed-down doom-core covers of pop songs. Let this little ditty from John Galm be the last one in before the door closes. Galm's whole record is somewhere on the Greg Mendez Index, which is to say it's pleasant, plaintive, and stripped to the studs. I don't even know if I like this song, and I definitely think calling it out is a disservice to the rest of the album, but the mind is an imperfect instrument over which no man can claim mastery.