Memo to shoplifters from a retail employee: I have zero beef with you for stealing from my capitalist overlords. But please stop making me clean up the evidence you leave behind. Do a little research. Don't be so impulsive. Treat it like a craft and develop some technique, for God's sake.

[If Andy Warhol were a GOP strategist] “In the future everybody will talk to Mitch McConnell for 20 minutes.”

Five authors who died while you were alive who you've read five books by each Martin Amis Paul Auster William Goldman Denis Johnson Elmore Leonard Kurt Vonnegut

Five living writers that you've read five books by each Michael Chabon Jonathan Lethem Richard Price Jess Walter Colson Whitehead

They came and fixed my A/C unit — replaced the compressor and I don’t know what else — and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but when the fan comes on now it sounds like the whole apartment is about to taxi down the runway.

We already know the GOP are a bunch of venal, duplicitous shitweasels, but assuming that everything we're speculating about Mitch McConnell turns out to be true, Elaine Chao is cold as fuuuuuck.

I realize that these are world-class athletes and I'm just projecting, but corner kicks always make me nervous because if it was me I'd kick that post at least 50 percent of the time. "Bend it like Brent" would become synonymous with kicking the corner post. #BRAvsNOR #FIFAWorldCup

I have to pause whenever I hear or read her name because I still haven't worked out a useful mnemonic for "Elise Stefanik bad/Elissa Slotkin good."

My library hold became available while I was in the middle of my summer long-read, so I’m presently reading two authors I’d end up fistfighting if I were their copy editor.

Now playing: JAWS (Spielberg, 1975)

Centennial: "We made it 100 years. That's great!" Bicentennial: "We made it 200 years. That's fantastic!" Semiquincentennial: "We made it halfway to 500 years. This enterprise can still go pear-shaped at any time. Heads on swivels, everybody. Stay frosty."

Carter Burwell BLOOD SIMPLE needle drop in this week’s SUGAR, thank you very much.

If the crowd size at this celebration isn't the thing that makes It Happen, some country's gonna get bombed Sunday morning.

While I'm sort of charmed by the formality of it, football's practice of making the substitution wait on the sideline until they're tapped in by the player they're replacing is as inefficient as the sport's refusal to stop the clock when a player is injured. #FIFAWorldCup

Of all the subplots of this #FIFAWorldCup, I believe the most heartwarming is the way Madison Avenue stepped up to save David Beckham from bankruptcy and destitution.

I feel confident in stating that the single-day attendance at a Fan Fest in any #FIFAWorldCup host city is greater than the combined turnout at any three days (possibly more) of the #GreatAmericanStateFair.

Happy to report that the "Fireworks Prohibited" sign at the entrance to my complex is doing a bang-up job. Which is to say I literally hear bangs coming from two different directions right now.

Well, fuck. #ARGvsCPV #FIFAWorldCup

OK, cheering for Cabo Verde, but definitely here for the shot of Manu Ginobili, my favorite Spur. #ARGvsCPV #FIFAWorldCup

I love that Messi has this kind of irked expression now, like, "Don't they know who I am?" #ARGvsCPV #FIFAWorldCup

CABO VERDE! EQUALIZER! #ARGvsCPV #FIFAWorldCup

My dream of a Côte d'Ivoire–Cabo Verde final has already been dashed, but that will not preclude me from cheering on the 64th-ranked underdog in this #ARGvsCPV knockout match. #FIFAWorldCup

In general, I'm against shootouts, in both football and hockey. (Football favors the kicking team; hockey favors the goalie.) In a playoff, I believe both should play until the last two exhausted players collapse on the pitch/ice. Sort of a THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? situation. #FIFAWorldCup

I've begun to wonder whether in general footballers are either extremely well compartmentalized or situationally very clumsy because when they're away from the pitch they momentarily forget the use of their hands is permitted. #FIFAWorldCup

In the broadest sense of "remains hospitalized," I just imagined a Sesame Street song titled "A Morgue Is Also a Room in the Hospital." "... in the hospital / In the hos-pi-tal / Well, a morgue is also a room in the hospital / Where the people that you meet are dead"

My #FIFAWorldCup conspiracy theory is that hydration breaks are proof that FIFA is in the pocket of Big Stoppage Time.

I’m a dilettante so I’m perhaps more amazed than I ought to be by the number of goals on headers I’ve seen so far in this #FIFAWorldCup. Also my sense is that those would frustrate goalkeepers more than giving up a kicked goal. Some guy nodded emphatically and the ball got past you. #AUSvsEGY

Not for nothing, if Bob's Big Boy didn't swing some kind of sponsorship deal with the Croatian national team, it's a missed opportunity. #PORvsCRO #FIFAWorldCup

The good: The maintenance tech came to set up a portable A/C to cool the apartment while a fix is being scheduled for the faulty unit outside. The bad: He arrived PRECISELY in time for me to miss both Belgian goals at the end of full time. #BELvsSEN #FIFAWorldCup

You know the story about how anytime ROAD HOUSE is on TV, day or night, Bill Murray and his brothers call their friend Mitch Glazer to let him know Patrick Swayze is making love to Mitch's wife, Kelly Lynch? I wish I had Oprah’s number so anytime I see Mehmet Oz I could tell her to go fuck herself.

I'm the most casual of followers, the most nascent of football enthusiasts, so I know I can't be alone in being baffled if not low-key outraged that #RSAvsCAN is the only #FIFAWorldCup match scheduled on a Sunday. It's the vestigial tail of group play on a day when they could dominate viewership.

In honor of his 100th birthday, a loose retelling of my favorite Mel Brooks story:

Memo to Fox Sports directors: You are under no obligation to spotlight fanatical countrymen in costumes, face paint and goofy wigs when your camera operators have proven themselves equally adept at spotting some of the world’s most insanely beautiful women cheering for their teams. #FIFAWorldCup

I have no indelible memories of Portugal's superstar Cristiano Ronaldo in action, so whenever I see him in close-up, I see the infamous bust sculpted in his honor, as though his actual movie star–handsome face is just a palimpsest on thin tracing paper over this ridiculous thing my mind can't unsee.

Summer 2026: That time I spent a month watching athletes I don't know from countries I'll likely never visit play a sport I barely understand to avoid watching my home team daily find new and varied ways to be the piñata in a sport I've understood since I was 5. #Royals #FountainsOff

Marlowe's $180 vet visit Friday stung, but she's worth it. Instead I'm celebrating the $1,500 I saved because I can't afford a new MacBook with the OS requirements to support Steven Soderbergh's new $25 app detailing the 143-day production of JAWS. Like and subscribe for more money-saving tips.

Last night I reached down to take off my socks and found a dead spider crushed against the outer ball of my left foot. Ordinarily I give them a fighting chance, but last night neither of us saw it coming.

Today I stumbled across the album cover for jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's 1962 Blue Note release HUB-TONES, and it is almost certainly the inspiration for the one-sheet of one of my favorite movies, Steven Soderbergh's 1999 crime-and-revenge drama THE LIMEY.

Every employee breakroom in the American workplace is its own little circle of hell.

This movie's single flaw is that Jeff's fall from a third-story window is less convincing than Norman Lloyd's fall from the Statue of Liberty 12 years earlier. #RearWindow #TCMParty

I need a whole movie more prominently featuring the Doyles' babysitter and her accent. #RearWindow #TCMParty

I wonder if Lisa's line "Because it knew too much?" was a trigger that prompted Hitch to remake THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH two years later. #RearWindow #TCMParty

I love the brandy snifters swirling in unison as the "bit of business" that gives all three characters something to do with their hands in this scene. #RearWindow #TCMParty

"The Seductive Showgirls" and "The Overpassionate Daughters of the Rich" would be great names for all-girl rock bands. #RearWindow #TCMParty

We see Jeff put his camera equipment to a number of different uses, but the one thing we never see him do is take a picture. #RearWindow #TCMParty

Post one (1) photo of a painting that you took with your very own hands. The photo, that is, not the painting. "Hollywood" (1938) by Thomas Hart Benton, whose life intersects with my own in a number of circumstantial but interesting ways.

If Scott Bessent had to lead Ukraine against a Russian assault he'd shit himself and curl into the fetal position on Day One, so his opinion of Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a hero whom I'd take over this entire administration of sociopaths, drunks and unqualified sycophants — means less than nothing to me.

Mauricio Pochettino looks like he could get work as Russell Crowe's stunt double. #USMNT #FIFAWorldCup

This Fox #FIFAWorldCup announcer just deadass said, "You know what would help the U.S. is to get a goal." We're up 2-0 in minute 87, but sure, Guy Who Knows More About Soccer Than Me. Another goal is always good to have, just in case. A rainy-day goal. #USAvsAUS

On my drive home this afternoon here in mildest suburbia, a nondescript blonde woman crossed the intersection in front of me driving a Mustang convertible painted Angelyne pink.