Going to live theater is one of the main things I do in my life, so I have decided to highlight some of this year's productions that particularly excelled in categories that I just now made up.

Best Conceit

We need to keep all NFL players away from streamers. Or, at the very least, one streamer in particular: Adin Ross.

When we last checked in with Ross he was hanging out in what was surely a crazy-smelling room with then-Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner, who decided that a live broadcast was a good place to say, "I'm gonna be honest, like no funny weird shit, y'all run the world." He was talking to Ross, who is Jewish, and who did not take offense because his whole brand is built around moronic provocation. You may also remember him as the guy who bought Donald Trump a Cybertruck.

Expansion teams are usually bad because they’re contingent on being bad. For narrowing the other teams’ slices of the revenue pie, they can join the league only at a high cost and at some competitive disadvantage. If they do fashion something workable from everyone’s leftove...

Laura Wellington is estranged from one of her adult daughters. The Connecticut 59-year-old is somewhat famous for this, in fact, or anyway famous for her response to it. Across Tiktok and Instagram, under the name "Doormat Mom," Wellington's railing against the supposed inju...

Terence “Bud” Crawford, the most accomplished fighter of his generation, announced his retirement last night on social media, saying he had “nothing else left to prove.” 

It's hard to argue with the man. Crawford leaves the fight game with a 42-0 record, and recognized as the only fighter in the alphabet soup era of boxing to hold undisputed championships in three different weight classes. The first of his undisputeds came at light welterweight (140 lbs.) in 2017, when he KO’d Namibian Julius Indongo with a savage third-round left hook to the kidney in Lincoln, Neb., in a fight that only a few boxing hardcores cared about. 

In a surprising offseason move, men's No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz has split with his coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, after seven years and six major titles. Thus ends one of the most successful and intimate partnerships in tennis. It began when Alcaraz was a teenager, traveling an hour ...

There is a rarefied group of NHL players worth watching no matter the circumstances—time, place, stakes, teammates, opponents, whatever. Macklin Celebrini might already in that club. The 19-year-old center, drafted first overall in 2024, is leading a resurgent, playoff-minde...

I'm doing things a little differently this year. Instead of writing a list of matches, I'm going to look the last 12 months of pro wrestling in three different parts of the world, then give you some matches to watch at the end of each section. Ready? Ring the bell.

The U.S.

Family heirlooms are a trap, okay? But that doesn’t mean I know how to escape. Way back in the late 70s, my dad bought my mom a simple necklace composed of tiny lapis lazuli beads. My dad was never the type to buy jewelry, and my mom was never the type to wear it, which ought to take pressure off.  And yet I sense a storm is already brewing. 

I want the necklace, but have never said so out loud. This is partially because my family is still mulling over the concept of the singular they as a pronoun, and I don’t know if they can handle me wearing jewelry without going through a major gender regression. My sister-in-law wore the necklace when she married my brother a few years ago—it was her “something borrowed,” and how cute it’s also blue! I think that was checkmate and I might not ever get over it.

Dante Alighieri thought he could write himself out of exile. In 1300, while serving on a governing committee in his beloved Florence, the poet was involved in a factional dispute among city leaders. The following year, while in Rome on a diplomatic mission, he found his own ...

[Opens front door while holding a toy corgi in one arm]

Merry Christmas! Oh my God, you made it! I thought you might be stuck at the airport for weeks! Well, because it’s such madness out there. Piper here won’t eat his treats; he can feel the tension in the air. And our Charlotte just endured at nightmare at O’Hare on her way back to us from Colorado College. Her plane sat on the tarmac for eight hours. And she was seated next to this awful, big fat woman who brought a bag of Taco Bell food onto the plane with her. Can you imagine? I suppose they just let anyone fly these days.

California's Central Valley is a 400-mile long expanse, penned in by the Sierra Nevadas to the East and the Coast Ranges to the west. The flatland is composed of remarkably fertile soil, as both mountain ranges erode into and drain out through the valley via the San Francisc...

When Rob Reiner was killed earlier this week along with his wife and creative partner Michelle, the world of film lost one of its most beloved and respected figures, an artist who had done very good and extremely popular work in a variety of genres, first in front of the cam...

Nothing But Respect returning champion Tom Krell unveiled several compelling theories this week on the show. They include:

• Las Vegas is becoming increasingly irrelevant as a nexus of vice, since the internet now facilitates all that stuff.
• Cam Johnson runs like a middle manager.
• The Oklahoma City Thunder will lose "10-12 games at some point this season" (he's joking but his reasoning is compelling).
• Based on conversations he's had with someone who helps style Cade Cunningham, Jamal Murray has cost himself millions of dollars by refusing to optimize his Instagram presence, which we all found refreshing.
• Nikola Jokic is a negentropic hooper.

The WNBA and its labor force are in the midst of a contentious, high-stakes CBA negotiation, which could not be happening at a more interesting historical juncture. Women's sports have seen explosive growth in their popularity over the past few years, which is not without it...

In late November and early December 1999, the World Trade Organization convened in Seattle for a round of conferences and negotiations. Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets to meet them, including labor activists alarmed by the post-NAFTA landscape of the US, as w...

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 Joe Burrow, karate kicking a door shut, LARRY, Christmas cookies, and more.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is my last Funbag of 2025. I’m headed out on Christmas break with my family, so we’ll have a guest host or two minding the store while I’m gone. Same deal with the Jamboroo. As always, you can still write into our guest bloggers using the usual Funbag email address, so get on that. And have yourself a merry little Christmas, won’t you?

How do you solve a problem like the Buffalo Sabres? If you just looked at a list of the guys who've played for them over the past decade—Jack Eichel, Ryan O'Reilly, Jeff Skinner, Sam Reinhart, Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin, JJ Peterka—you'd probably think, "Well, surely this ...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As celebrity restaurant mascots, athletes offer a tidy sense of vertical integration: Why not supply the very calories they need to expend on the field? I’m surprised there are so few successful models. We have all mostly forgotten (or agreed not to talk a...

The present-day Lakers-Suns rivalry seems to spring from profound mutual disgust. This is best glimpsed in microcosm, via the "rivalry" between LeBron James and Dillon Brooks, two hammy fellows who love to pout and push each other around. Over the course of Sunday's Lakers v...

Here's a one-play summary of the Cleveland Cavaliers season: On Sunday, Halfway through the second quarter, with his team trailing the piece-of-shit Charlotte Hornets, Darius Garland navigated not so much around but rather into a Jarrett Allen screen, smacked into his teammate, fell over, and gave up a pick-six layup.

Saturday afternoon a man barged into a lecture hall on the campus of Brown University, in Providence, and fired an assault weapon at the 60 or so students assembled there. Eleven people were shot, and two died. The attacker left the hall and is presently at large. Rhode Isla...

The Cincinnati Bengals are cheap. There is a good chance you already know this, as it is a longstanding issue. When Takeo Spikes joined the team in 1998, the team gave players used jockstraps. As of a few years back the organization had just six full-time scouts. “There’s a ...

Last Wednesday, newly minted CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss dropped the big news. As she walked through the CBS newsroom, Weiss looked into the camera, mechanically moved her hands around, and gave it to us straight: "I just sat down for an hour with Erika Kirk, and we ...

In the poster advertising the new film Ella McCay, a woman stands on one leg, her mid-length coat waving around her, as she gently touches the back of the high heel of her left shoe. Her other arm is extended up and out for balance. It is such a strange position that people have begun posing like her as a challenge. What could this movie possibly be about? Was it about shoes? Was it about imbalance? Who the hell is Ella McCay? 

These were the questions that haunted me when I went to New Jersey on Saturday to find out. I traveled to the closest theater playing Ella McCay, bought a giant popcorn and giant soda, and settled in. The 2:00 p.m. showing, one day after the movie’s release, was almost entirely empty. There were seven other people in the theater, and my friend and I (both in our 30s) were a full two decades younger than any of them. 

You know who got obliterated yesterday? Well, not Philip Rivers. Eat that with a pointed stick, you morbid ghouls. We expect that the number and conditions of the many casualties from this most recent knives-and-cleavers mosh pit of a football Sunday shall be covered in the...

Who else? Gardner Minshew brought down the Chiefs dynasty. Down 16-13 to the Chargers, helmed by a backup quarterback, and in field goal range, Kansas City had 20 seconds to save its slim playoff chances. Head coach Andy Reid had his choice of appropriate endings here. One w...

You can always bank on a good Monday crossword here. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Stock and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a crossword constructor in Gainesville, Fla., where he is pursuing a master’s degree in counseling. His puzzles have been published in the New York Times, USA Today, and the New Yorker, among other venues. When he’s not making puzzles, Matthew enjoys cooking, birdwatching and playing ultimate frisbee.

Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE.

On Sunday night, fans of the Minnesota Wild got to enjoy the very best genre of regular-season game that there is: Amazing New Trade Acquisition Immediately Contributes To A Win. In a 6-2 stomping of the Boston Bruins, defenseman Quinn Hughes earned his first career goal for an NHL team not in Vancouver—entering the attacking zone behind the play at speed, picking up a pass, and then launching a shot through the legs of Jeremy Swayman. That No. 43 sure looks strange in forest green, but that's our problem, not the Wild's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXg0XHmllM

Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy is suddenly fighting back against the "sucks" allegations. Sunday night's 34-26 victory over the Cowboys was not only his second straight as a starter, but another game in which he showcased some competent quarterback play. Completing 15 of 24 passes for 250 yards, three total touchdowns, and an interception is fine. It's fine!

By the second quarter, McCarthy was feeling good enough about his performance to introduce a little dance. With the ball right on the Cowboys' goal line, the Vikings called a beautifully executed naked bootleg that left McCarthy to enjoy a solitary trot into the end zone. Blessed with all that freedom, the quarterback's zoomer instincts kicked in and he hit the griddy into the end zone.