This week's SI (and Newsweek?)

Apropos of nothing, I Digress has the best avatar on this site.

 

It is fantabulous. I wish I'd found it first.

 

Definitely Newsweek. August 18-25 issue. "An Agent of Change" as the lead of the table of contents for a story about the second term of the Bush administration.

If I complain, will they send me a Sports Illustrated football phone as an apology?

 

No, but they might send you some used NY Giants toilet paper if you re-up your subscription

 

This is a mini-threadjack, but I had The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated last night for a flight from Philadelphia to Providence. I was looking forward to reading the Sports Illustrated Olympic coverage, but I actually found The New Yorker Olympic coverage more interesting. Especially the Anthony Lane piece, though I thought his other piece, a review of "Tropic Thunder" was off target.
The best Olympic piece in SI, in my view, was the small take on London preparing for 2012 by Mike Farber, not just because he's a way better writer than just about anybody on their staff, but because London's Olympics is something I haven't already read 25 stories about.
There is nothing anybody could write at this point about Michael Phelps that I would read more than 3 grafs of.

 

SI gives the worst shit for renewals. How many team fleeces, SI sweatshirts or shitty gym bags do you need? I got a handheld Sudoku thing from Time.

 

I was underwhelmed by the Michael Phelps piece. No offense to Susan Casey, I think that's who wrote it, but for an event of this magnitude wouldn't SI choose someone more notable?

 

I'm sure it'll be one of the biggies for the Sportsman of the Year piece. Casey wrote the pre-Olympics Phelps piece and the one last week so it seems like he was her beat. I thought she did fine, although I'm sure the story at the end of the year will be more big picture.

 

Susan Casey is a pretty accomplished author and journalist. I don't think she's an SI staffer, so I figured she's been doing the Phelps stuff for them maybe because she's working on a book on him or something. I agree that SI's Phelps coverage hasn't knocked me out, but that might just be because I'm tired of the subject.

 

Maybe they sent your magazine to the same place where the fused-together jellybeans I always got at Easter come from.

Then again, maybe we can use the Next Generation excuse and say there was some sort of temporal anomaly at the print shop?

 

I was wondering why I didn't get my SI this week, until I discovered my daughter got it first and tore off the cover for her Phelps Phan scrap book.

 

Do you think it's possible I'm the only subscriber in America to get 16 pages of Newsweek in my SI? If so, I'd be more impressed than irritated.