So I see those late night hooligans David Letterman & Stephen Colbert made a spectacle of themselves w/ wanton destruction of CBS property, thankfully no Russian babushkas pushing baby strollers were in the line of falling debris. Worse, Letterman took Edward R. Murrow's name in vain, how dare he.

Kate O'Flynn's Patricia comes to the fore in the latest WIDOW'S BAY (Apple TV), expanding the scope of the show's spectral sphere and delivering an acting tour de force while Loftis & Wyck were fending off a succubus sea hag. By the end the put-upon Patricia has Proven Herself and then some.

It doesn't help that with each episode Jon Hamm's Cooper seems more benumbed.

Speaking of downers, the funeral/eulogy episode of YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS was paced like a pallbearers' march, punctuated by a screaming fit and projectile vomiting. This is a series that doesn't seem to know what to do with itself, adding complications w/o any sense of purpose & destination.

I was so enjoying MARGO'S GOT MONEY TROUBLES (Apple TV) but the most recent episode plunged off the pier into bonehead melodrama. As much as one identifies with the underdog characters, once they start crushing someone's hand or breaking someone's jaw, such stupid self-sabotage casts away sympathy.

Relieved to learn that the semi-demi divinity Katya is resting and recuperating at home after a scary bout of emergency abdominal surgery. May her recovery be thorough, stately, and sedate so that she can return to full tigress form.

My library hold on Ben Lerner's TRANSCRIPTION just came in. Boy, is it boring -- weightless, prosey, unfiltered. Nothing happens aside from a dropped smart phone. The overselling of this book by certain critics is nothing short of astounding. If this is best fiction on offer now, we are cooked.

The delight the cast members of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 are taking in each other is really making me ILL.

It’s odd that Bari Weiss chose Shayndi Raice as CBS News International editor—she lives in Tel Aviv, edited a disputed Gaza story, and her father-in-law is Jonathan Pollard’s rabbi.

Well, that didn't quite pan out. youtu.be/y-4nKu24TSU?...

All of those tuxedos filing out of the ballroom, such a beautiful pageant.

So Fetterman lumbered into the ballroom on a Saturday night for nothing.

It's almost occult how Greg Kinnear looks and acts even more like Bob Crane (HOGAN'S HEROES, in case you've forgotten) than he did when he played Bob Crane in Paul Schrader's AUTO FOCUS nearly a quarter century ago. #MargotsGotMoneyTroubles

Elf porn could find no better emissary than Elle Fanning in MARGO'S GOT MONEY TROUBLES (Apple TV). She looks even cuter when gossamer-winged. And Nicole Kidman, what a trouper, does her scene than is whisked to the hospital for an IV.

looks like a washington wizards game

I'm probably projecting, but I sometimes think you can see the effect of social media in people's faces, like it's carved out this sense of bitter humourlessness and removed any trace of joy from their expressions.

the girl guides in the UK just kicked out all their trans members specifically bc they were threatened with a lawsuit from a rowling-funded group

absolutely infuriated at having to see or hear anything having to do with the harry potter shit again. wallowed through a damn decade of that stupid british people crap. harry potter themed pub crawls and adults talking about "their comfort series" and here we are right back. we live in hell

My 3yo was reading The Free Press when he turned to me, gravely, and asked: "Daddy, why won't the media show support for the nice orange man's war with Iran?" And when I told him, "they want to, but they've been silenced by the woke mob at Oberlin and Brown," he started crying.

Well, this looks like a valuable use of a viewer's time. (Or would be if we heard a high piercing whirring sound before Kirn is levitated into an alien spacecraft.)

Another bad Matt. (Taibbi, Yglesias, Walsh...)

Shapiro is near the front of the 2012 field. thehill.com/homenews/cam...

My take on the Oscars broadcast is that it all seemed rather...perfunctory. Also, all those interviews with Conan O'Brien about the pressures of being the Oscar host and there he was doing his usual self-deprecating marionette shtick. (And that pre-taped coda was a misfire embarrassment.)

Sounds like the Coalition of the Unwilling outnumbers the Coalition of the Willing about 12-0.

Cancel culture took out so many father figures that only those who larp as old men are left.

When Matt Taibbi lost his podcast partner & soul bro Walter Kirn in a surly divorce, a vacant spot opened. Diving deep into the grifter dumpster, he has dredged up Michael Tracey to make podcast magic. Yes, the grubby beardo who once claimed a 78 year old Maxine Waters went Cobra Kai on him.

Finished copies of our first major reissue project: THE RITZ OF THE BAYOU by Nancy Lemann! New Orleans Book fest, attendees and pre-orders get it first! For everyone else, available wherever books are sold on April 7th. Order yours: www.hubcity.org/ritzofthebayou

Is Nellie Bowles the worst writer in America?

Markwayne Mullin looks and sounds like some backwoods ding-dong that Raylan Givens has to throw in his car trunk on JUSTIFIED

ROOSTER (terrible title), yet another college campus dramedy to toss on the pile, this one starring Steve Carell, following in the loafers of Bob Odenkirk in LUCKY HANK (another terrible title).

I'm trying to figure out which documentary I'm less interested in seeing, the one about Seymour Hersh that came out on Netflix or the upcoming one about Lorne Michaels that will debut only in theaters for a target audience of ghosts and dust bunnies.

I just viewed the Epstein files. A few things are clear: 1. Trump’s name is all over them. 2. The DOJ is breaking the law and denying the victims justice. 3. A single 3-hour viewing was not enough time. I will be back. If you have questions, let me know in the comments.

They are still writing thousands of words about him being a serious man who prostitutes himself and so forth, when for damn near fifteen years I’ve shown you left, right, and sideways he’s a clown without an original thought in his head.

When it comes to covid restrictions & masking, Kirn is a higher caliber, lower cal version of Joe Rogan still crabbing six years later, "The restaurants were closed, the comedy clubs were closed..." Only with Kirn it's 'the mean flight attendant who chastised me for letting my mask slip,' bwah.

I was Walter Kirn's editor for UP IN THE AIR and three other books by him. He was terrifically smart and talented and I enjoyed working with him. But we parted ways and by degrees he has drifted into a very strange space, like he caught some mind virus from RFK Jr. I've seen him on Fox and it's wha?

Maybe Walter could whip up a wacky laff-fest sequel devoted to the 2026 measles outbreak. Now that he's no longer podcasting with Matt Taibbi he has more creative "quality time" available.

Mandelson, even reduced, had more power than Andrew ever did. It is a big goddamn deal.

Great archive @LRB debate from 2002 on 'War on Terror' Interesting to be reminded of similarities between then & now regarding Euro-American militarism How Tariq Ali was remarkably prescient & how Hitchens was such a disgraceful propagandist www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

I recognize one's a better writer than the other but I miss Elizabeth Wurtzel more than I miss David Foster Wallace.

I realized what bugs me about David Foster Wallace's famous putdown of John Updike, apart from being glib, reductive, etc. It shouldn't read as Updike is "just a penis with a thesaurus," but the reverse. A thesaurus with a penis. That makes much more sense. DFW should have flipped the phrase.

I can't steel myself to listen to Ben Shapiro and his whiny rat-a-tat voice on The New Yorker podcast, hosted by Broadway legend Hal Linden.* If only there was an AI summation somewhere I could tap that would supply the salient "high points," if any. *[needs fact checking--ed.]

It appears that the Matt Taibbi-Walter Kirn podcast breakup or trial separation wasn't mutual and amicable. Basically, Kirn got blindsided by Taibbi and was left with a bitter taste in his mouth, one that no amount of oral rinse can swish away. Another beautiful bromance, kaput.

The only ass America is kicking is its own. www.city-journal.org/article/ben-...

"Thank-you-very-much" (Elvis Presley voice)

I can't locate the Bauer interview on YouTube so perhaps Daum pulled it.

Maybe I'm jaded or naive* but I actually expected HEATED RIVALRY to be a lot hottier considering how much everybody was carrying on about it. *neither

"Woody Allen is mentioned 7000 times in the Epstein files. Is that, like, a lot?" (George Costanza voice)

BBC radio thinks a photo of Prince Andrew with an unknown woman is more newsworthy than revelations of tens of thousands of pounds from Epstein to the then deputy prime minister’s partner, seriously?

Lord Peter Mandelson was sent money directly from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as early as 2003, according to new files released by US government The files record three payments in 2003/4 from Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts of $25,000 each, all mentioning Mandelson www.ft.com/content/1728...