Weekend Reading Roundup (Parenthood* and Deadspin** Delays)***

I pride myself on timeliness, so I apologize about my tardiness. It isn’t the weekend anymore, right? So how can I justify recommend weekend reading material? Shame upon me. But I’m a gone do it anyhow. Because I also pride myself on continuity, and if I just accepted the “eh, just skip a week of this post” thought on the train ride home, well, that would be like Julia Roberts mixing up all the alphabetized canned goods in whatever movie that was that the Real Mel Gibson is going to make look tame as fuck when all’s said and done. (Point of pride alert: This is what came up first when I googled, Julia Roberts alphabetized canned goods.)

Lord, I was born a rambling man today, huh? Well, I’ll go and make up for that right now with bullet points (Well, technically hyphens, but still).

— My man Rick Ford got some more print love for his excellent work with the Strawberry Mansion All-Stars baseball league (which I’ve been writing about since ’07).

— Fatwa issued urging fighters (translation: terrorists) to marry the widows of fallen fighters (translation: terrorists who took the promise of a bunch of after-world virgins over sticking around to tend to their real families. (New York Times)

— Note to Philadelphia Inquirer: The term “imposing frames” is not an acceptable substitution for “obese,” which should have been used in your Sunday story about Chris Christie and Stephen Sweeney. And you wonder why kids are so fat. It’s your fault.

— Awesome story in the NY Times about how old-school-rap research was involved in linguistic study.

— The Hickey Endorsement: Childrens Hospital on Adult Swim.

— Esquire’s “The Impossible, It’s All Possible” issue had two magnificent pieces to check out. One’s about Terry Kniess, who beat The Price is Right. Like totally beat TPIR. And the other’s about everything leading up to Felix Baumgartner’s big skydive. By big skydive, I mean from 120,000 feet. Shame the story’s not online; here’s the best I can do.

* Most of you know the bride and I welcomed our first-born, Louden Charles Hickey, into this crazy mixed-up world on June 29, right?

** Some of you know I took over “weekend guy” responsibilities at Deadspin.com this past weekend, right?

* + ** Explains why I didn’t have time to type this up yesterday.