NEWS
September 16, 2012 | By Stephen Markley, @stephenmarkley and For RedEye
We need some levity this Monday. I've been saving this column for a long, long time. It's my "break the glass in case of emergency" column. It's my "crossing the streams of the proton packs" column. With the tragic Benghazi incident abroad and the divisive, emotional standoff between teachers and the city here in Chicago, we need to be reminded of the wonderful, unflinching absurdity of the human condition, which, I would argue, is defined by Steve Markley, 28-year-old genital enthusiast, pontificating on the plastic surgery operation known as "the Barbie.
SPORTS
November 22, 2011 | By Scott Bolohan, For RedEye
Dear Jay Cutler, It was recently brought to my attention that you might have read a column I wrote earlier this year. And to pretty much everyone alive's amazement, you acknowledged it, tweeting it was "completely false" and subsequently blocking RedEye on Twitter. I never meant to hurt you. It was satire. Like Mark Twain books, Herman Cain and reality TV. It wasn't real. It was a joke. And frankly, you blocking RedEye over my column is funnier than anything I've ever written.
NEWS
April 16, 2013 | Stephen Markley
Over the years, I've been lucky enough to receive some pretty spectacular hate mail. However, what I've noticed is that people will never get more offended than by the stuff I'm saying the least seriously, with my tongue most obviously in cheek, that has the least relevance to anything happening anywhere in the world of any importance whatsoever. Take Monday's column on naked old men parading around gym locker rooms . First of all, everyone knows this is true. Second of all, I obviously wasn't saying, “Shame on you for being alive, old people!
NEWS
June 10, 2012 | By Stephen Markley, For RedEye
Hey, who's in Iceland right now? Just me? OK, then I'll explain the entire country in this column. It started like this: My friends Bojo and Trin decided to quit their jobs and hop around places that are not America for a while. I decided to more or less empty my bank account to travel with them on the first leg of their journey to this strange, magical world called Iceland. Honestly, I've never been to a place I've had so much difficulty describing both aesthetically and socially.
SPORTS
November 26, 2012 | By Jack M Silverstein and For RedEye
The text arrived about 30 minutes after my column went live on redeyechicago.com . It was my buddy G, a Vikings fan. He was not happy. "I want you to know I take personal offense to your column," he wrote. "You went too far. " We'd been smack talking all day both privately and on Twitter, and perhaps I was still channeling that mindset when I wrote my postgame column about my dislike of the Vikings. I'd imagine my disrespect of the Vikings wasn't what bothered him, though, but rather my disrespect of Vikings fans: "[The Vikings]
NEWS
February 11, 2013 | Stephen Markley
In light of Lance Armstrong's Oprah interview and a kerfuffle over Ray Lewis and deer antler spray, the topic of performance-enhancing drugs has been in the news with renewed vigor. It has culminated with this overwrought, hyper-ventilating column by Bill Simmons' of Grantland , which has instigated my biggest intellectual backlash to the whole purity-in-sports movement to date. As regular readers of this column know, I adore Simmons and his gargantuan run-on columns and entertaining-as-actual-sports podcast.