Even celebrities -- who 10 years ago would have considered their progeny a liability to their image as sexually attractive bachelors -- now regularly flaunt their devotion to their babies, hoping to gain sensitive-guy street cred. Maybe it started with Kurt Cobain and Frances Bean. Or maybe when Nick Hornby's novel "About a Boy" -- in which a frankly useless 30-something bloke invents a kid in order to impress women, only to find that fatherhood itself may be as fun as a good romp -- became an international bestseller. Whenever it started, you can now see images of father and child everywhere: Mark McGwire is pictured with his son on Safeway-brand cereal, and David Beckham, soccer superstar and husband to Posh Spice, made national headlines in England when he blew off training to be by his infant son's side when he was a touch feverish.

Continue Reading...

"I have read books written
by people who obviously love football,
but that's a different thing entirely;
and I have read books written, for want
of a better word, about hooligans, but
95 percent of the millions who watch
games every year have never hit anyone
in their lives. So this is for the rest
of us, and for anyone who has wondered
what it might be like to be this way ..."

-- Introduction to
"Fever Pitch" by Nick Hornby

It was with some expectation that I
headed out of Arsenal tube station and
toward an Italian restaurant on
Northolme Road last fall to meet Nick
Hornby. I'd been a fan since his first
book, "Fever Pitch," a loving account
of the way his home team, Arsenal FC,
had been symbolically linked to every
significant event in his life, was
published in 1992.

"Fever Pitch" spoke to all British men obsessed with football
(soccer in America), but for
me there had been a special twist: I
support the team Tottenham Hotspur.
Located barely two miles from each
other, Tottenham and Arsenal have been
fierce rivals for more than 100 years.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2000/03/31/hornby/feed/ 0