James Lyden

@jameslyden.com

Raconteur, triathlete, strategist. Lived 15 years in Las Vegas after the lawyer said he could get me 10. I make hot sauce; try some at http://prairiefireprovisions.com

Current governor of Illinois JB Pritzker holding a sign reading "Fighting for Your Rights" with the caption "1993, JB Pritzker at the Pride Parade"

My closest match is Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York City

"He will be fully transparent on the 30th," Mr. Neely wrote in a text message.

Top reads 1st - 26th Dec above a smiling figure in a Santa hat, below the stick figure it reads "Festive."

Next panel over the top reads 27th Dec - 31st Dec above a stick figure wearing a puzzled expression and holding a wedge of yellow cheese. Below the stick figure it reads "Confused, Full of cheese, Unsure of the day of the week."

One of the fighters on Idiocracy's "Monday Night Rehabilitation", Beef Supreme

Charles Oakley standing at the front of a Chicago Transit Authority "El" train with the caption "For a Fast Break, Rebound from O'Hare with the CTA"

Chicago Blackhawks Scott Foster #90 jersey

A bearded man with long hair and arms outstretched, the character "Beef Supreme" from the movie Idiocracy

Tweet thanking primary voters from Congressman Tom Kean, who hasn't been seen in months, with "every day I wake up" circled in red

Vanilla Ice in a red white and blue glitter based outfit, with large baggy pants and prominent shoulder pads, exhorting an audience to cheer

The meme of Spice Adams standing behind a tree rubbing his hands together in anticipation, but his head has been replaced with an orca

Data center protest in Vancouver, BC in May 2026. Picketers are holding signs that read "WE DON'T WANT THIS" and "FUCK YOU"

Protestors holding signs saying "WE DON'T WANT THIS" and "FUCK YOU"

The Wonders/Oneders, from "That Thing You Do!"

A still from Bill Watterson's comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" in which Calvin is drawing a graph entitled "Dad Performance" on an easel with a downward trend so sharp that he has to add extra sheets of paper while Calvin's father looks on bemusedly

A Far Side cartoon in which three deputies are running out of a building reading "Sheriff" with a caption of "Looks like the bank's been hit again. Well, no hurry - we'll take the big horse." On the left side of the panel is a horse so large that only the right rear leg is visible to the top of the building

Most of the way down to Atlantic City, we talk about interactive entertainment. Penn says it'll never work. Entertainment movies, theater, music, art - boils down to the performer, not the audience, being in control.

"Technology adds nothing to art," he says. "Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now, do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not?" But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

"The fact of the matter is, since the beginning of time, you could buy a Picasso and change the colors. That's trivial. But you don't because you're buying a piece of Picasso's fucking soul. That's the definition of art: "Art is one person's ego trip."

Penn says he and Teller "have been offered a huge amount of money and a huge amount of technology to do interactive shit. We have turned them down. Not that the technology wasn't up to snuff, but because we don't have any ideas."

"The whole fucking world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology," he says, as we whiz by the Blade Runner-like landscape of New Jersey oil refineries. "The bottleneck is really in art."

Basset hound puppy jumping up to greet two people in an apartment

An email from the Wikipedia Foundation acknowledging a donation

Mel Torme in a tuxedo singing into a microphone

From Wikipedia: "[Mark] Morrison later was incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs for a year for paying a lookalike (Gabriel Maferika) to perform his court-appointed community service in his stead, while Morrison himself went on tour."

$"Physically, Lenny didn't belong in the same league with him. He was half Billy's size and had a fraction of Billy's promise - which is why the Mets hadn't drafted him until the 13th round. Mentally, Lenny was superior, which was odd, considering Lenny wasn't what you'd call a student of the game. Billy remembers sitting with Lenny in a Mets dugout watching the opposing pitcher warm up. 'Lenny says, "So who's that big dumb ass out there on the hill?" And I say, "Lenny, you're kidding me, right? That's Steve Carlton. He's maybe the greatest left-hander in the history of the game." Lenny says, "Oh, yeah! I knew that!" He sits there for a minute and says, "So, what's he got?" And I say, "Lenny, come on. Steve Carlton. He's got heat and also maybe the nastiest slider ever." And Lenny sits there for a while longer as if he's taking that in. Finally he just says, "Shit, I'll stick him." I'm sitting there thinking, that's a magazine cover out there on the hill and all Lenny can think is that he'll stick him." The point about Lenny, at least to Billy, was clear: Lenny didn't let his mind screw him up. The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones. Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not all that far from his head with total confidence. "Lenny was so perfectly designed, emotionally, to play the game of baseball," said Billy. "He was able to instantly forget any failure and draw strength from every success. He had no concept of failure. And he had no idea where he was. And I was the opposite."$