2025-26 Fenerbahce Istanbul
112 · 2026-05-07 · medium
For me, today was the type of Christmas that only comes around once every ten years. That's right, it's time for me to renew my U.S. passport. If you've never had to do this in another country, here is how it works. First, you book an appointment on a dot-gov site where all the URLs have ".asp" at the end, then wait patient through the two-month backlog. After that, you pay 130 American dollars through a separate dot-gov site, one that looks like it was designed for Netscape Navigator but accepts crypto for some reason. On lucky happy passport day, you proceed to the American embassy. You sit in a waiting room, where the entire panoply of human drama is on display: people screaming at stone-faced staffers who rejected their tourist visa applications on (alleged) technicalities, people wailing because they won't get to visit their dying relatives in Chicago, crying babies all over the place. They turn off and take all smartphones at the front gate, so my only pastime entertainment was a large screen that was showing the adventures of a super-consul named Anna, presented as a maho shojo manga series slideshow. Anna is a nerdy brunette who owns a cute dog and loves macchiatos, she can materialize in either country to provide instant help, and she always wears a flag lapel pin. (Think of her as a cross between Flo from Progressive and Sarah Palin.) In one four-panel comic, Anna busts a guy who's scamming locals into paying hundreds for guaranteed winning Green Card lottery tickets. In another, she hyperloops to an American college campus to inform a worried coed that student visa extensions can be done over the inter net. I was actually starting to get crushy a little bit, uwu! But then things took a distinctly sinister turn. Anna has a night out at a local restaurant, enjoys a wonderful solo meal, then warmly compliments the chef; he then asks if it's possible for him to visit San Francisco and take on a kitchen apprenticeship with a 90-day tourist visa. NO!!!!! Anna slams her hands down on the table. Then she's working the consulate window, a guy comes in with a literal wheelbarrow full of documents, and Anna kindly informs him that he only needs to fill out three simple forms to enter the lottery. "You mean you don't need my bank statements, proof of return, the title to my house?" The fourth panel has Anna smirking at the camera, and you can clearly read her mind. These fucking immigrants, I swear to fucking God. After almost an hour without clocks, the staff finally called my name. I was invited into a small anteroom that was presumably for Americans only. There were three framed photos on a bare wall, the outside pair bearing the meaty visages of the current VP and Secretary of State. The middle one was raised a few inches, just like Golgotha; I'd never seen it before, and I immediately busted out laughing. The Official Presidential Portrait has a dewy Harlequin-meets-Olan Mills patina, lit by angular shadow and light that only the Adobe Corporation can provide. This instantly reminded me of "Sexy Atatürk", an entire subgenre of products sold in Turkish gift shops that recast the father of the country as a steamy DILF. While I was living in Istanbul one passport ago, I collected as many of these items as possible – keychains, pencil sharpeners, t-shirts – and I still use my prized Sexy Atatürk notebook every single day. Anyway, basketball. Led by beloved Zero Season protagonist Šarūnas Jasikevičius, Fenerbahçe won the EuroLeague title last year. When the Fener women won the ELW championship last month, I forgot to mention that this is the first time one club has ever held both titles — sort of like UConn in 2004. There's still a chance this situation could continue on into next year: as of this writing, they are one game away from returning to the EuroLeague Final Four, up 2-1 in a five-game quarterfinal series with Zalgiris. Game 4 is on Friday. I'll have more to say about all of this next week, but for now I really could use a long nap.
