2026-02-27 22:02:44
If you walked down Colorado Boulevard in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles at some point in the past three years, you might have noticed a modest, pueblo-style beige building with “PHOTO” painted above its door. And if you had decided to go in, there was a decent chance you’d know the person working the counter. This part of town is on the up; the adjacent building was sitting empty and in disrepair for at least 15 years, but it recently became a Turkish textile and loungewear shop. Down the street is an artisanal cheese store. Two spots up is a Taco Bell—gentrification does not scare the Taco Bell—but if you were hungry, you could always try the photo shop, where there were sometimes donuts around for the taking.
Even those who have never been to LA might have been familiar with Eagle Rock Camera & Goods, which opened in 2023, because it was regularly advertised to the 450,000 Instagram followers of the store’s proprietor, pro skater turned actor turned fine-art photographer Jason Lee. You could buy analog cameras or photo books at the shop. If you’re like me, you could browse in order to motivate yourself to dig your old film camera out of the closet. Or you could just hang out, talk art, and make friends. “It’s kind of a little local community hang spot as much as it is a retail store,” Lee told me while sitting on a couch in the back of the shop, next to a refrigerator filled with film available for purchase.
Some of those who recognize Lee from his acting may reasonably hesitate at the offer of a pastry or treat; one of Lee’s most famous bits, from Kevin Smith’s 1995 movie Mallrats, is when his character Brodie rubs his hand in his asscrack before giving a nemesis a chocolate-covered pretzel. These are the types of roles that made Lee an omnipresent face in a certain sector of Gen X cinematic malaise: He would play invariably scruffy, wise-ass sarcasm machines banking on their charm to guide them through the world. Their names were Earl, or Banky, or Beaver, and they tended to capture an idealistic form of degeneracy—one in which a lack of ambition didn’t reflect a lack of latent intelligence.
2026-02-27 04:56:31
When I first heard rumblings that the world had assembled a conclave to elect a new celebrity zoo animal, I felt preemptively wary, partly due to world events and partly because we still don't know the long-term psychological consequences of fame for child stars like Moo Deng. Then I saw a video of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque Punch dragging his Djungelskog IKEA orangutan toy, and instantly felt my heart swell. It is difficult, I fear, to stave off the pangs of emotion that come when watching a baby monkey—a primate just like us—appear totally alone, clinging to a stuffed toy while he watches the other inhabitants of his enclosure hold and groom each other. When I watched videos of Punch dragging his Djungelskog to yet another empty corner, I felt impossibly sad.
This sorrowful saga has traveled far and wide. When Punch-kun the Japanese macaque was born in July in the Ichikawa City Zoo, his mother abandoned him. This sounds cruel, but it is known to happen under certain circumstances. In this case, she was a first-time mother who gave birth during a heat wave, making for a stressful labor. "In environments where survival is threatened from outside stress, mothers may prioritize their own health and future reproduction rather than continue to care for an infant whose health may be compromised by those environmental conditions," Alison Behie, a primatology expert at Australian National University, told The Guardian.
Without a mother, Punch needed someone, or something, to which he could attach. As Ichikawa City zookeeper Kosuke Shikano told The Guardian, baby Japanese macaques cling to their mothers after birth, both to build muscle strength and to feel a sense of security. But Punch, left alone, had no one to hold. After the keepers attempted to give him several towels, they offered him the Djungelskog, which had the added benefit of looking like a monkey. Punch immediately attached.
2026-02-27 02:29:42
You know the thing that the truly great rim protectors do in basketball, where they learn they can alter shots by aura alone? The area under the basket becomes a Sarlacc pit, the remote and terrifying domain of a very large, patient, and hungry creature. The great ones are happy, thrilled even, to welcome a meal. They learn to stop jumping out and using their body to cut off ball-handlers and take charges, because they've seen the advantages they can sometimes gain by inviting drives, by baiting some fool into taking another dribble, into dreaming of scoring at the basket.
Victor Wembanyama has advanced to another plane, to what his opponents will have to hope is the ultimate stage of rim-protection dominance: He appears to be developing the no-look shot-block. He had an eye-popping one of these Wednesday, in a road win over the Toronto Raptors. Wembanyama refused to leave a darting and cutting Collin Murray-Boyles, down in the dunker spot, in order to deter a drive from Scottie Barnes, who was isolating against a size mismatch. Barnes is Toronto's best player; Murray-Boyles, God love him, is just some guy, some well-meaning rookie fella. The book is pretty clear on this matter: Go ahead and leave Collin Murray-Boyles, send help at Barnes, zone up the weak side, and force the Raptors away from the basket.
Wembanyama has his own damn book, a grimoire containing secrets of the darkest defensive magic. Instead of leaving Murray-Boyles, Wembanyama fully turned his head and back to the court and faced into the stands, showing no sign of even noticing Barnes's attempted dunk until the Raptors forward was already in the air. Then, whoa hey, suddenly a huge hand was flying in and slapping the ball out of there. Wembanyama looked almost irritated at Barnes, like he'd rudely interrupted something, as if what the Frenchman really did want to do on that possession was closely observe the movement patterns of his undersized counterpart. The ball raced back the other way, and the Spurs jogged into an open transition three-pointer.
2026-02-27 02:13:55
The biggest business story related to the NBA has nothing to do with tanking, Kawhi Leonard, or the NBA's new national broadcast partners. We are only a little more than a year away from the launch of NBA Europe, a new basketball league across the Atlantic that proposes to upend and Americanize the game.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver is swinging huge: The proposed league would feature 16 teams, 12 of whom would have permanent slots, and they are reportedly trying to put teams in Athens, Istanbul, Paris, Lyon, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, London, and Manchester. That list of cities highlights both how disruptive the venture would be and how much new ground would have to be broken. Basketball culture in Europe is not centered in the biggest cities the way it is in the United States, so the NBA is essentially betting that they can create it from whole cloth in places like London and Milan.
On the other hand, teams like Olympiacos and Panathinaikos in Athens and Fenerbahçe in Istanbul have deeply established traditions that the new league would disrupt. Massively important and well-supported teams in less glamorous markets like Belgrade and Kaunas, along with the EuroLeague structure, could be left to wither and die if this all works the way Silver wants it to. "If I thought that the ceiling was the existing EuroLeague and their fan interest," Silver said in January, "we wouldn't be spending the kind of time and attention we are on this project."
2026-02-27 01:33:48
Five of the eight Champions League playoff ties went roughly as expected. Paris Saint-Germain had a bit more trouble separating itself from its Ligue 1 rival Monaco than predicted, but rode a 3-2 first leg win to a 5-4 aggregate victory. Newcastle demolished Qarabag, 9-3. Atlético Madrid turned a 3-3 first-leg draw around with a 4-1 second leg at home to dump out Club Brugge. Bayer Leverkusen vs. Olympiacos was a snoozer, won 2-0 on aggregate by the former. Real Madrid comfortably dispatched Benfica 3-1, with an uncomfortable amount of racism playing the starring role in the match-up. It all went pretty straightforwardly, in other words. Except for the racism, that sucked.
The other three ties provided some more excitement, though. Borussia Dortmund took a 2-0 lead from a dominant, entertaining first leg, but ran out of steam against Atalanta back in Italy, where the home side won 4-1 to squeak by on a one-goal aggregate victory. In what would normally be the biggest upset of the round, Galatasaray rocked Juventus 5-2 at home last week, and then endured a tie-leveling 3-0 Juve fight-back in the return leg before scoring two goals in extra time, the Turks advancing by a 7-5 aggregate margin. It was thrilling, messy, and featured a wonderful winning goal by Victor Osimhen, which was just about the most expected outcome in an unexpected showdown.
2026-02-27 00:46:47
Take one look at the NBA standings lately and you’ll discover that teams like the Jazz, Kings, Wizards, and Nets are slacking off even more than they have in previous seasons. It’s made for some pretty dire television. Last week, NBA commissioner and Tim Burton character Adam Silver informed the general public that he intended to do something about it. Will Silver simplify the byzantine rules surrounding protected draft picks? Might he even get rid of the draft altogether? Pfft. Pish posh. Did you really expect a lawyer to make things less complicated? No, instead the NBA has proposed even more rules on top of all of those other rules. Are any of these tweaks a good idea? THAT, dear listeners, is the subject of this week’s Distraction.
But wait! That’s not all you get for your money. With David Roth stranded by Winter Storm Scary Name, Defector bossman Tom Ley bravely stepped into the breach to act as my sparring partner for 45 and change. We wrapped up the Winter Olympics, spent a brief moment ruminating over how the Trump people went about ruining the good vibes those games elicited, and we both agreed with Pat Riley that NBA coaches should wear fancy suits again, if only because it’s more fun to watch a grown man roid out on the sideline while clad in Armani rather than in athleisure.
