2026-03-25 04:49:45
For my money, the funniest recurring bit in Amazon's highly variable action-comedy series Reacher is the use it makes of its main character's blank, brutal sociopathy. Reacher, in Reacher, is generally righteous, but the code that he follows serves mostly to offer him one shortcut after another to outlandishly brutal violence. He is swift and certain in his assessment of every situation, which means that he is often doing stuff like brusquely folding some henchman's body like a fine-dining waiter might fold a discarded napkin, to the evident horror even of those otherwise on his side. Reacher will squint and mutter something like "It was one of Col. Grissom's kill team," or "He was with the Ecuadorians," if questioned about it, and some short time later, he will say "I want pancakes now" in roughly the same tone.
But that is just my opinion. If you polled most Reacher watchers, they would probably tell you that the funniest Reacher trope is how many characters try their luck against him in single combat. Reacher is canonically enormous, a Gronkowski-sized violence engine hard-wired to dispense compound fractures to those who exploit the vulnerable who is, paradoxically or not, absolutely catnip to members of the Exploit The Vulnerable community despite being effectively invulnerable himself. In Reacher, the role is played by the slightly less large but still objectively mountainous actor Alan Ritchson, and while the show throws in some visual gags grounded in Ritchson's size—two full-sized characters briefly obscured by his refrigerator-sized torso, one regulation-sized barbecue grill hurled through the window of a sedan—most of the size-related storytelling comes down to some version of this:
2026-03-25 04:38:12
Before this week, Dayton Webber's life was often described as inspirational. In 2010, a story on ESPN described him as a 12-year-old boy who, despite the quadruple amputation of his hands and legs to survive a bacterial infection at 10 months old, lived a spectacularly active and normal life, including a passion for wrestling. As an adult, he became a successful professional cornhole player, leading to him being the subject of TV features by both ESPN and the Today Show. Webber leaned into this imagery himself, writing on his TikTok account that he's a motivational speaker. On Instagram, his biography says that he's a "quad amputee that sees no limits." It's familiar imagery to any sports fan, where the archetype of the athlete overcoming the odds, regardless of gender or ability, is as central to the messaging as sports itself.
Webber's social media also showed him firing weapons. On TikTok, he showed his prowess with a crossbow. On YouTube, his account included videos of him shooting various firearms. Webber leaned into this imagery himself, with one video titled "No Hands No Feet Shooting 9mm Handgun!!!!"
It was a firearm he used on Monday, according to authorities, to shoot and kill another man. On Tuesday, Webber, age 27, was charged by authorities in Maryland with two counts of murder. Law enforcement said he shot a passenger in his car, killing him.
2026-03-25 01:37:52
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 universal knife subsidies, noogies, desert island concerts, good doggies, and more.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m out next week on Spring Break. That’s right, baby. Me and my boys are heading down to Cancun to crush some beers and mack on some fine ladies. And not necessarily in that order, muchacho!
I kid, of course. My family and I are off on a road trip all week, which was a good plan seeing as how air travel in this country is no longer possible. But fear not, we’ll have a guest host bagger ready for you folks, so email them your stupid questions and they’ll indulge you. Got all that? Sweet.
2026-03-25 01:26:39
The New York Rangers have had a bad enough season as it is, what with being the worst team in the Eastern Conference and all, but charity like this is frankly unbecoming. They left Madison Square Garden Monday night tying a 71-year-old franchise record for fewest shots in a game with nine in a 2-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators, only to head to Toronto this morning for a game against the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference and finding out that, no, they'd actually attempted 10. In a phrase, damn it.
In the grander scheme, it doesn't much matter, but in a season this forgettable, in a game this bad, why would you try to find an extra shot to make the night seem less abject? Statistical accuracy, sure. A more accurate reflection of reality, fine. Still, in a game so otherwise bereft, finding that 10th shot seems almost antithetical to the tale being told here. The 10th shot must exist, clearly, but to what end?
Nine is just a better number. In fact, any truly valuable league employee would have gone through the tape and taken off a shot or two, just so the numbers could fit the greater truth. The fewest shots taken in a game is actually six, by Toronto, in a series-clinching playoff loss to New Jersey (and we're sure the cheery Toronto mediocracy handled that well) in 2000. In a regular-season game, the record is seven, by Washington in 1978. Frankly, we would have been tempted to eradicate the Rangers' third-period goal by Conor Sheary, but we are clumsy white-collar criminals and surely someone would have noticed if the final score changed. Sheary, for one.
2026-03-25 00:18:50
Madison Square Garden is playing host to a copaganda campaign that has infiltrated its sporting events and will culminate in a special concert on March 28, exclusively for officers and civilian employees of the New York City Police Department. Surely you can figure out which very rich person is responsible for this idea.
It was only by attending a New York Rangers game Monday night that I became aware of the "Thank You, NYPD" campaign. Compared to the usual ticket price for a hockey game at MSG, it was a relatively reasonable $55 to get in and witness Mika Zibanejad's 1,000th NHL regular-season game, a momentous occasion in which his team, the worst in the East, recorded a historically low total of nine shots on goal in a 2-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators. The following morning, the Rangers were credited with one additional shot. Dignity restored.
During a break in the game, I was distracted by the video display's request that fans turn on their phone flashlights to thank the NYPD—a call to action that felt too stupid for a child to have suggested it. Then a QR code appeared on screen, and reappeared throughout the rest of the game, encouraging those in attendance to scan it and record their own videos thanking the NYPD. Who came up with this?
2026-03-24 23:17:23
I've never been to Connecticut except to pass through it, so I personally can't speak to how hospitable it is to visitors. But Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack would be happy if she never saw another Nutmegger for the rest of her life.
"For us to continue to come to Connecticut year after year after year is, to me, it's a personal attack," Legette-Jack said after her Orange lost, 98-45, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Monday. That was just one line of many in her press conference/vent session that all but begged the selection committee to stop grouping early-round teams by region and give Syracuse some other top program's home court to lose on.
"To have to come and be in this particular bracket every freaking year is unacceptable," she said. "It's wrong."
