The deskbound polemics of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” demonstrate focus and sustained thought. Eric Liebowitz/HBO At this point, we all have heard that print media is dying and that online journalism rests upon shaky business models. But at least fake news is thriving, right? Not so fast.…

Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed Like so many true romances, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller first committed to each other with an act of profound cheesiness. It was the summer of 1996, and Miller was interning at the visual effects house Industrial Light and Magic while living in what amounted to a…

I look back on the days I averaged only thirty thousand steps, and think, Honestly, how lazy can you get?

DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon 2 considerably expands the world introduced in the first film, and that expansion includes a significant new presence: Valka, the long-lost mother of dragon-riding protagonist Hiccup, voiced by Cate Blanchett. The film devotes much of its sweet, sensitive middle…

Nathan Fielder (seated), in a tough spot in downtown Los Angeles. Jeff Minton for The New York Times The new cafe at 1802 Hillhurst Avenue looked familiar, but something was off. It was nestled into a strip mall in Los Feliz, on the east side of Los Angeles, and its logo was a double-tailed mermaid,…

With 4/20 coming around this Sunday, we could have easily given you a list of all the reasons that Super Troopers has become one of the greatest "stoner comedies" of all time. Instead, we decided to chat with all five of the Broken Lizard guys to let them tell you all about this little film they…

The old man set it up masterfully. He mentioned that his 67th birthday was coming up and waited for the “APPLAUSE” sign to flicker off. Sixty-seven. He’d been hosting a late-night show for half his life, he realized, so he grabbed an index card and counted up the shows. When he mentioned making more…

I’m a big David Foster Wallace fan. His 2005 commencement speech will go down as one of the best ever. If you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently … You get to decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. He’s also a big proponent of thinking . I have come…

BEGIN WITH ONE LARGE FISTFUL OF SLIGHTLY DINGED, Mary Richards–brand feminist spunk. Add in two clumps of zany, Larry Sanders star-power narcissism, and a…

For nine years, Jerry Seinfeld played a character named “Jerry Seinfeld” on the most popular show on television. During that time, he never revealed a single thing about himself. Sure, both Jerries wore sneakers, ate cereal, and dated a procession of young brunettes . The two were even ostensibly in…

Google's proposed 1.2 million square foot Bay View campus. (NBBJ) Not a cash cow That growth might not be so bad if Google had more to offer than higher property values. City council member Mike Kasperzak is generally proud to call Google a neighbor, but he points out that the company’s presence…

Sure, he’s done stand-up, too; right out of college, he’d take a bus from his aunt’s in Fort Hamilton to do sets at Carolines comedy club in Times Square, and…

A Toast Story By John Gravois Giulietta Carrelli outside the Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club. (Photo: Jeff Singer) All the guy was doing was slicing inch-thick pieces of bread, putting them in a toaster, and spreading stuff on them. But what made me stare — blinking to attention in the middle of a…

And nowadays people who write in Clinical Standard Written English actually mark themselves as untrustworthy by doing so. Because the new usage, call it Modern Written English, is everything CSWE is not: first-person, colloqiual, breezy, open, and personal.

An explanation. An apology. A plea.

America received the ultimate booty call on May 7, 1992, courtesy of Seattle rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot and his song “Baby Got Back.” Since its release through legendary rap-rock producer Rick Rubin’s Def American label, the up-tempo track — which spent five weeks at No. 1 and was the second-best-selling…

Can a bunny in the desert tell us? Playboy Marfa at sunset. Photograph by LeAnn Mueller Login / Register OR No Account? Register here. It was mid-April when Judge Paul Hunt’s office received the first call. The judge was at his desk inside the Presidio County courthouse, a pink stucco building with…

In pop music, you learn how to wait around. Venues, airports, hotels. Waiting, waiting, waiting. And photo shoots. In mid-July Ella Yelich-O’Connor, now far…

When I was asked to edit an issue of the New Statesman I said yes because it was a beautiful woman asking me. I chose the subject of revolution because the New Statesman is a political magazine and imagining the overthrow of the current political system is the only way I can be enthused about…

One day last month, the seven employees of Everpix gathered at their co-working space in San Francisco to discuss the company’s impending shutdown. Wayne Fan,…

Speaking to a variety of teenaged boys and girls across the country, Nancy Jo Sales uncovers a world where boys are taught they have the right to expect everything from social submission to outright sex from their female peers. What is this doing to America’s young women?

View this image › The first thing that occurred to me when I found out that I was going to get Grand Theft Auto V a few days before its release was that I…

Are tech entrepreneurs replacing Wall Streeters as the rich bad guys in the popular imagination? It’s starting to seem that way, at least in the media. The clearest example of this new rich-guy-bad-guy casting shift was the summer’s hullabaloo surrounding Sean Parker’s wedding. A fictional Parker,…

W hen Bob Santilli, a senior project manager at UPS, was invited in 2009 to his daughter’s fifth grade class on Career Day, he struggled with how to describe…

1. Recently, a close friend sent me an e-mail with the subject line “Things I’ve Noticed As I Get Older.” The ten numbered observations ranged from the mundane…

Ian Padgham / Via vine.co With nearly 300,000 followers, Ian Padgham is one of the most popular non-celebrites on Vine. His daily posts are a mix of silly humor and stop-motion whimsy and have won him a large audience and frequent mentions as a top Vine user to follow. Until last Friday, he was…

(Fox) A dialogue of nerdiness. To: Mike Konczal, Dylan Matthews From: Jim Tankersley Re: Chrismakkuh in August The most culturally important television show of the 2000s is suddenly 10 years old , gentlemen. Has it really been that long since Ryan Atwood stumbled into the gilded, troubled paradise…

Every Pixar movie is connected. I explain how, and possibly why. Before we go further, I should let you know that The Pixar Theory is now a published book. Since writing this blog post in 2013, I’ve been working on completing the unified theory in what I hope you find to be a compelling and even…

It was just over a year ago that I wrote a post here at Deadspin outing comedian Mike Burns as the man behind @DadBoner, one of the most popular Twitter feeds ever devised. If you're unfamiliar, the @DadBoner universe centers on the labors of a heroically optimistic Michigan man who lives in his car…

Sex Tapes Didn't Used to Disgust Trump By Olivia Nuzzi Sex Tapes Didn't Used to Disgust Trump By Olivia Nuzzi Politically expedient changes of heart are to be expected for presidential candidates.They’re just not usually about porn.Barack Obama was for gay marriage and then against it (and then for…

There’s this great moment in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) when the world’s most celebrated sushi chef turns to his son, who is leaving to start his own restaurant, and says: ‘You have no home to come back to.’ Which, when you think about it, isn’t harsh or discouraging but is in fact…

Where will all the traffic go? Interstate highways running through dense city centers strangle the potential for those cities to flourish. The highways are falling apart anyway; let’s tear them down. The timing is perfect. The most loved cities in the world — like Paris, London, New York, San…

Bobby Hossain’s day starts early. Along with his family, he runs a food truck called Phat Thai that serves his mother’s Thai recipes “with a modern twist.” Although he won’t be serving customers for nearly 4 hours, he wakes up by 7:30am. He is working a double shift in the truck (lunch and dinner),…

My Brother, My Mother, and a Call Girl by Mara Cohen Marks My brother Danny lost his virginity at age 25. To a call girl named Monique. Hired by our mother. My mother didn’t bother asking Danny for his permission before engaging Monique’s services. She didn’t ask my father to condone the…