Editor's Note

This was supposed to be a rant.

It was going to be a takedown of what has become, in recent weeks, my new favorite target: Grantland.com, ESPN writer Bill Simmons’ much-hyped pet project. Simmons, who made his name with his hyper-referential Sports Guy column, had assembled a sort of all-star writing team culled from print magazines, blogs, The Times bestseller list, etc. for an essay-based website that promised to avoid the rampant commercialism and self-referencing story packaging for which ESPN has become notorious.

Grantland drew everyone’s ire at first because of how precious it seemed: Some mystical writer’s haven, where the focus was on writing and letting those fragile but brilliant writers, handpicked by the standard of Simmons’ own unimpeachable tastes, finally flourish in a forum that understood their highbrow ethos.

It was the same sort of self-important, self-indulgent premise that made the Miami Heat the world’s most hated professional sports franchise. But it was worse, really, because the Grantland staff—pseudointellectuals like Chuck Klosterman, alongside amateur pop culture critics like Molly Lambert—were hardly the all-star team they purported to be.

And when the site launched, it fulfilled those initial impressions to an extent that was almost comical. Like Simmons calling Carl’s Jr. and Jack in the Box “the Winklevoss twins of fast food,” just exactly the sort of absurdly meaningless pop-culture reference he’s become known for, and even worse, doing it in a footnote, as though his notoriously rambling style couldn’t be interrupted for that sort of indispensable pithiness.

But before this turns into a rant, I want to note some of the parallels to this nascent volume of Recess. Hopefully not in the writing style—The Chronicle, after all, is a newspaper of some repute. But, like Simmons in the days leading up to the site’s launch, I have assumed a measure of control over a publication with little idea of what to expect from it.

If all goes as planned, this volume of Recess will stand up to the last volume, which was pretty stellar. We’ll expand our Playground blog and integrate it with the current Recess website, so that you’ll be able to see all our content in one place online. We’ll become a more active presence on Twitter, and we’d really appreciate a follow: @chroniclerecess.

In this issue, read up on Durham record label Trekky Records’ annual summer festival in our centerspread. Take a look at our feature on the Nasher’s weekly summer entertainment, especially if you’re wanting for Thursday plans.Check out our takes on the summer’s biggest films and music releases, plus editor-in-chief Sanette Tanaka’s interview with contemporary dance choreographer Tao Ye.