An International Gathering for the Deaf in the Arts. Deaf Way II, a week-long festival and conference in Washington, will feature works visual, performing and literary by 400 deaf artists. By Lynette Clemetson. [New York Times: Arts]

Nick Hornby, a highly caffeinated British novelist, has written a brilliant and lengthy paean to World Cup football for the New Yorker. Hornby's Fever Pitch is a gripping and melancholy novel about the footie. Before I read it, I would have bet you $300 that there was no way I'd find several hundred pages about any sport, let alone soccer, interesting enough to plough through, but truth be told, I could no more put it down than I could stop reading Hornby's article about World Cup Fever in England.

The Italians have always had a strange approach to football. Their players look like pop stars, and the squad almost always includes at least two forwards whom every other country in the world would kill for; all the outward signs suggest flamboyance and a sense of stylish adventure. But traditionally they play a stupefyingly defensive game, as if too much scoring would somehow cause people to doubt their masculinity. The Italian way is to score once, and then refuse to cross the halfway line for the remainder of the game.

[Boing Boing Blog]