fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
Former CBS announcer Phil Simms always seemed a little overwhelmed by the idea of talking intelligently about football games. This wouldn't have been a problem had it not been the literal definition of his job. Instead, Simms and the countless other broadcasters and ex-players who get paid thousands of dollars to talk about the football [...]
If you were looking for proof that the beginning of the NFL season is filled with disastrous, sloppy football then by the end of Sunday night you would've had a lot of material to work with: the first full day of the season included blown calls, botched punts and a handful of memorable broken plays. [...]
After bursting on the scene with arguably the greatest debut for a rookie wide receiver in NFL history – 10 catches for 217 yards and two touchdowns against the Detroit Lions – Anquan Boldin spent the next 13 years muscling his way through NFL defenders and into the record books. The sure-handed receiver, who announced his [...]
If you score more points than your opponent, you win. That's how fantasy football works.[note]Unless you play in some bizarro-world league, I guess.[/note] The simplicity of that binary outcome hasn't exactly made assembling your fantasy team a simple process - for the love of God, look at all these draft strategy guides - but it [...]
For roughly a third of its 28 mile run, the I-696 expressway is cut down into the earth, its concrete walls slicing through the moraines that decorate southeastern Michigan. Driving along the highway, with those walls rising up on either side of the you, there is a strange feeling that traffic isn't driving down a [...]
A decade ago I sat in a collegiate music composition class and listened to a professor explain how, in order to write a truly great song, it was necessary to hone an idea over and over, fully exploring it and discovering the best way to implement it. Young people, he posited, struggled with this because [...]
When I was a kid, my best friend lived down the street. Ours was that kind of inseparable childhood friendship where we hung out pretty much every day, no matter what. We played with Legos and video games and on the same hockey team. We knew each other's immediate and extended families almost as well [...]
Sammy, Summer is in full swing. It's the season for barbecues and swimming pools and crazy NBA contracts. I'm guessing you were thinking of that last item when you tweeted this: https://twitter.com/sammywatkins/status/881516252233125888 I get it. NBA players that you've never even heard of are pulling down huge new contracts while players who are adequate but [...]
Look, the world feels an awful lot like it's going to shit right now. And a fair number of Baby Boomers - the people who have been running this shit show for a while now - are pretty sure that not only is the world ending but that it's all millennials' fault. No seriously, it's all millennials' fault. [...]
America is kind of a dumb place right now. We suck at akudemicks school and we keep putting people who seem to be terrible at their jobs in charge of our most cherished institutions. Oh and we elected Donald covfefing Trump as our President too. Not a great run. America likes to see itself as a [...]
Songs & Stories 