Nicholas Sparks explaining the difference between love stories and romance novels is like Vanilla Ice trying to explain how that bass line in Ice, Ice Baby isn't a ripoff of Under Pressure. Sit down.

Sweatshirts? For fall? GROUNDBREAKING

My mother was a hippy and she taught me to have a very casual and relaxed attitude toward sex. Which I appreciate in theory and still ascribe to, but I needed more balance. She didn't understand, and I didn't until too late, the slut shaming that is endemic in our culture, particularly in high school. Plus in…

Thanks for this. I've been yelling this at my tv and radio for weeks now. I taught in a women's prison and had countless women in my class with the same stories. I had a woman whose husband essentially scalped her with a 2x4, beat her repeatedly, threw her through a glass door, brought home his girlfriend beat her in…

I should have clarified better. There was no homophobia in the Swift song. I was impressed that there was nothing offensive about the video and it was just dudes having a good time.

Yeah, all the frats I had dealings with in school tended to have at least several dozen members, most of whom lived somewhere other than the house. I have realized writing this that, despite attending a women's college, I actually had dealings with many frats, since often they would house us when we went on tours. A…

Oh man. I am really not into frat guys, but uhm.... these guys are kind of nerdy and cute and don't all look like raging douchebags. HELLO.

I'm an accent chameleon. Put me in another region for a few months, and I will start to sound like I'm from there. I do it subconsciously, and start to mimic the language patterns I hear every day. My Northeastern relatives tell me I've totally lost my Northeastern accent, and it makes me kind of sad.

This is why Joe Biden is my fantasy internet boyfriend. He gets so much shit for gaffes when 99% of the time, he's the smartest and most compelling guy in the room. Of course he would say this. Of course. I love him so much.

It is so good to hear that McBride's family feels justice has been done. This case feels like the silver lining on the dark cloud that is race in the justice system right now.

The Bronx

I am a lifelong Bears fan and also old as dirt. Today the Chicago Tribune had a list of the top 10 QBs in Bears history. Sid Luckman was number one. Sid Luckman last threw a pass when Harry Truman was president. Number two was McMahon, who never played a full 16-game season and has a Bears QB rating behind Erik…

He may have had a stronger arm, but that's pretty much the only aspect of his game that you could begin to make an argument that he was better than Brady.

Neutral NFL games actually do better in New England than elsewhere, we tend not to give a shit about sports like college football or NASCAR. The NFL is far and away the most popular televised sport in New England. Doesn't mean the fans are knowledgeable, but they do watch.

I think you get how the concept of "we" works here, and you're being needlessly combative in making your point that you like Tom Brady and college football. I write for Deadspin, I went to a big college, and my dad's from the south; I watch college football all the time. But do you disagree with the notion that New…

They were busted week 1 of the 2007 season. They went on to win 17 more games that season alone. They have been to 4 AFC championship games and 2 Super Bowls since being busted for recording their opponents. They've won plenty of things since then, just not any Super Bowls. There are 25 other teams that have not won…

I think Bledsoe's underrated around here these days. (My wife is just of the age to have had a bigger fake bond with Bledsoe; she gets that Brady's better.) Bledsoe didn't suck, he wasn't a bust. He was never consistently great, but so few are. I get the sense that he's viewed as a kinda Schaub guy who had a few years…

This whole "Pats fans think Bledsoe was better than Brady is" thing is news to me, and my day is seriously worse because of it because I cannot comprehend how you could even begin to think so highly of Bledsoe, he of the 4-3 career playoff record and 1.2 career TD to INT ratio.

Before Brady showed up, fans felt the same way about Bledsoe. It's a vicious cycle of stupidity.

Good point about Brady being curiously under-worshipped around here. My wife still wants Bledsoe back. I wonder if that contributes to the deification of Belicheck? It's always rammed down our throat that the only things that matter in the NFL are coaches and QBs (and linemen, but those are amorphous conceptual units…