The 2009 New York Mets are more or less an afterthought. Despite their humongous payroll — second only to the ever-profligate crosstown Yanks — and the presence of contemporary rock-star athletes such as Johan Santana, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, and Gary Sheffield, the underachievers have been overshadowed all year by…
God, are we sick to friggin’ death of watching celebs and regular schmoes tip the scales on reality weight-loss shows like The Biggest Loser and DietTribe. This is America, land of the lard-ass and the free, and our national verve seems to be going the way of our fatty acids…
Our job here at Night & Day is simple: We try to steer you to cool shit, first and foremost. The secondary aim, only slightly less important, is to keep you buzzed on the cheap. When we can achieve both simultaneously, we sleep like a baby who’s accidentally sucked down…
Think your Diamondbacks stink? What to make, then, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, before their 8-5 victory against the Brewers on July 20, had been Milwaukee’s bitch for more than a year? Before that W, the Pirates had choked away 17 straight to the Brewers (the Brewers!) over 14 months. It…
Let’s face it. The Arizona Diamondbacks have little to play for the rest of the season, so deciding whether to make the expensive haul to Chase Field rests heavily on who the D-Backs are playing. The Padres again? We’re cocooning with our Costco peanuts and beer. The world-champion Philadelphia Phillies,…
In the chilling/moving 2005 Grey’s Anatomy episode Into You Like a Train, two people are impaled by a metal pole after one of Grey’s typically gnarly accidents. Ironically, the pole is keeping them alive and coherent. Removing it will kill them. While medical soaps are typically a slim step above…
For a fairly crummy movie, 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story did what most high-brow fare can’t hope to: It changed the world – or at least the social prospects of a lot of people with wide waistbands and high heart-attack risks who crawled out of the woodwork to hobnob…
In our bizarro Carrie Bradshaw world, we dish to a trio of confidants: Madrid the one-legged hip-hop pirate, a plump drag-king named Olive, and Bertrum the Christian Science standup comic. Besieged by technical romantic difficulties, we usually end up over at Olive’s for slambooks, nachos, and tequila, swearing lazy vengeance…
God, are we sick to friggin’ death of watching celebs and regular schmoes tip the scales on reality weight-loss shows like The Biggest Loser and DietTribe. This is America, land of the lard-ass and the free, and our national verve seems to be going the way of our fatty acids…
Pete Rose is a numskull, but if he’s your definition of evil, you need to invest in a new dictionary. Yeah, Rose bet on games, including his own team, the Cincinnati Reds, while he was still playing/managing. And, yeah, that’s bad, but compared to the slimy, steroid-rippled creatures who’ve been…
It’s easy, especially in a league historically dominated by megalopoli like the WNBA, to write off small-market teams like the Minnesota Lynx, but the Phoenix Mercury won’t. The surprising Lynx, who’ve never finished higher than third in the West, whipped the Merc last time out and owned the best record…
The perception is that mystery/crime is geezer fiction. It’s old. It’s lame. If it were a dude, it’d have ED and a bum ticker. If it were a broad, it’d have sagging support hose and a house full of mousers. Now meet authors Theresa Schwegel and Megan Abbott, a couple…
With the halfway point of the baseball season mercifully upon us, let’s sum up, shall we? It ain’t pretty. Going into the final series of the D-Backs’ miserable first half (tonight through Sunday against the Florida Marlins at Chase Field), the homeboys — picked by many preseason prognosticators to win…
After a bone-pummeling, mind-numbing first 87 games of the season, punctuated by only nine days off since opening day on April 6, the only thing that stands between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the luxuriant four-day All-Star Break from July 13 through 16 is a four-game stand against the Florida Marlins…
They may not be the best-known athletes in Arizona, but Diamondbacks pitcher Dan Haren and Cardinals cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie have a ton of upside. This fact is not lost on the folks behind the latest Phoenix Sports Card Show, who’ve picked Haren and DRC to meet the fans and sign…
The rather unfortunate slogan of the WNBA’s Sacramento Monarchs is “Expect Great Basketball.” Or not. You can certainly anticipate it from the Monarchs’ full-tilt forward Nicole Powell, who was born in Sierra Vista and went on to play three All-America years at Stanford. But Powell, Sacto’s perennial scoring leader, is…
The Texas-based “Mojo storyteller” has made a career out of pop-culture allusions (he wrote briefly for Batman: The Animated Series) and absurdist fiction (Bubba Ho-Tep), but he really hit his stride with his “Hap and Leonard” series of novels about the most unlikely pair of backwoods-wisenheimer crimefighters ever to grace…
Sixty-two years ago, when the West Coast Science Fantasy Conference (a.k.a. Westercon) was founded, the term “geek” hadn’t been coined. Here in the 21st century, home of an all-powerful communications network those no-name nerds couldn’t have envisioned, geeks rule. The g-men, bristling with their social media, will descend on the…
If Ward and June Cleaver were Phoenicians, they’d live in Arcadia. Wally would be charming the pants off (not literally, of course) the pretty girls at Arcadia High, and Lumpy, Whitey, and the Beav would be bugging the crap out of the firefighters down at Engine Station No. 1. Meanwhile,…
The Cincinnati Reds are the very definition of mediocre with their 37-37 record — 17-17 on the road, 20-20 at home. Meanwhile, “humdrum,” “mundane,” or “dime a dozen” would be a step up for the laughable Arizona Diamondbacks, who are 30-46 and 18 sorry-ass games behind the L.A. Dodgers –…
Since the old Washington Senators franchise moved to Arlington, Texas, in 1972, to become the Rangers, it’s been consistently known for only two things: hitting and collapsing in the humid north Texas heat. Though the Rangers have fielded some talented teams over the years and are beloved, more or less,…
It is, of course, one of the enduring rituals of the American summer to take a tyke to the circus, or just go by yourself and stuff your maw with cotton candy. This year’s edition, titled “Zing Zang Zoom,” is an illusion-filled epic that looks more like Cirque du Soleil…
