I have a sort of hazy memory to share. I was a kid, riding in my parents' car on a bright sunny day, and we were sitting in traffic on a bridge over the Dulles Toll Road in Northern Virginia. I looked to my right, where you could see several miles of the highway stretching off toward Dulles Airport. Hundreds of cars streamed in both directions.

Far off, _wayyyyy_ the hell out there, where the…

Earlier this week, the Defector staff was chatting about Joel Embiid. Watching him give the business to the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of that series, with a vintage 33 points in a 113-97 road win for the 76ers, had been fun and surprisingly ... stirring? Not just because it came against the hated Celtics, but because the former MVP pretty plainly doesn't have much left. One of the things he no…

It’s two days before Christmas, and my family and I are in Munich. We got here on a red-eye the morning prior, and remain barely functional thanks to jet lag. But we didn’t fly all this way just to sleep, no matter how badly all of us want to do so. And if there’s any city that demands you keep your eyes wide open, it’s Munich in all of its Christmastime splendor.

We arrive at the Marienplatz,…

It wasn’t much of one, truth be told. It had little range. It was erratic, as all my attempts at prime athletic achievements were. It was not as erratic as my long-iron play, and only a little more erratic than my four-parry with an epee. It was deadliest from straight-on, since I did all my early work with it in my parents’ driveway, when I wasn’t turning my ankle on the raised edges of the…