culture

Voiced by David Alan Grier and Kenan Thompson—who skyrocketed in The Buzz’s book with this career-salvaging voice-over tour de force—the ads feature Kobe Bryant and LeBron James puppets who room together. The ads are hilarious and harken back to Chris Rock’s Li’l Penny Days before Penny Hardaway just became plain Anfernee. Bravo, Nike. Bravo.

What’s up down there? Turns out a lot of women may be afraid to ask this question. Many are too embarrassed to admit that they can’t exercise vigorously without the risk of peeing their pants. That’s what I discovered when I tried to add jump rope intervals to my boot camp class. My group of moms…

Every year in baseball, there is a division that turns things on its head for a while; this season, the entire American League is break dancing. The National League is progressing according to expectations. All four of last year’s playoff teams—the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs—are in…

Hundreds of Civilians Feared Dead in Nigerian Military Action Amnesty International has received reports hundreds of Nigerian civilians may have been massacred in a government attempt to rid the oil producing Niger delta region of rebel enclaves Reuters reports. The government has denied this claim, saying that no civilians were harmed or displaced. A military spokesman…

I’ve never been a Kobe Bryant fan. Maybe it’s because I’m still getting over the Lakers 4-1 deafening defeat of my mainstay, the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2001 NBA finals. Maybe I just don’t like his particular blue-chip swagger. Of his generation of athletes, I have always appreciated Serena Williams’ extroverted braininess, Donovan McNabb’s self-composure,…

Leela James’ last recording, Let’s Do it Again, begins with a rendition of Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman” and closes with the title track, a remake of The Staple Singers’ classic. Betty Wright and Mavis Staples are defining examples of a generation of black women singers whose sass and soulfulness stood out as one of…

At the turn of the 20th century, a visitor to the Congo might witness all kinds of horrors: Chained prisoners, executions (real and staged), long lines of porters, soldiers “pacifying” villages, ivory traders, rubber collectors, concubines and missionary sermons. At the time, it was considered nothing to be ashamed of. Just another day in the…

Hipsters. They’re everywhere. You’ve seen them on skateboards, in the mall and at the club. You’ve seen them shrugging dismissively in Oakland, Calif., Willamsburg, Brooklyn and Austin, Tx. And, suddenly, in Barack Obama’s Washington, too. Recently, I encountered Hector, a teenager skateboarding with friends outside a McDonald’s in downtown D.C. He’s wearing a neon T-shirt, impossibly…

Nike, Glaceau and everyone else betting on NBA finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers—a series between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James—are likely to be disappointed by the Conference finals. James and his Cavaliers are on target to make the finals, but Bryant and his Lakers, who flirted with disaster in the…

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, tends to say what he thinks. Recently he suggested that the AIG executives who took those hefty bonuses after their company was bailed out with taxpayer money should either “resign immediately” or “commit suicide” like their Japanese counterparts. And as controversial as that was,…