If I were on the Kennedy Center staff I would be making arrangements with the family to have the Kennedy bust quietly removed to an undisclosed location for safety. What's he gonna do - fire everybody?

"Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon." Happy Winnie the Pooh Day! Happy Birthday, A.A. Milne!

"I want everybody to be smart. I want 'em to be as smart as they can be. A world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in." --Garson Kanin, 1946 (Born Yesterday)

The books that most engaged, engrossed, moved, and/or delighted me in 2025!

In the interests of everyone's sanity, let's please remember that The Odyssey is not an historical document; it's an adventure fairy-tale in the context of historical event, the Ancient Greek equivalent of Raiders of the Lost Ark. There is a one-eyed cave-troll giant in it. There is

"No one needed a magic wardrobe that opens into Narnia if they had a library card; if you had a library card, you had a thousand magic wardrobes to choose from, ten thousand....A library card was as good as a sword drawn from a stone." - Joe Hill

"Better get some untaxed income, you've got to pick a pocket or two..."

I suppose partly because it expresses so beautifully my own relationship to Stoppard's work (I had the joy of casting 3 of his plays for my home theatre), this is one of the best tributes I've read so far. I know no one that's ever been part of "Arcadia" who hasn't been permanently magicked by it.

Hey, chyron check, Local News Broadcast: Senators/Congresspersons voting in favor of a bill vote YEA, not YAY (charming though that is to imagine).

This is how I'm going to look every time someone dislikes one of my posts...

You go, tiny king! Shakespeare is only as hard as you tell yourself it is. Happy St. Crispin's Day!

Wow, hadn't seen Campbell Scott in a while. The paternal genes are really asserting themselves these days.

The most grudging biscuit-making you've ever seen. #Caturday #catsofblusky

An absolute oner. Good night and thank you Diane Keaton.

"I don't care if it rains or freezes/ As long as I got my AI Jesus..."

Today it was pointed out to me that you can sing "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables" to the theme song from The Muppet Show and I have no idea how I'm supposed to live the rest of my life with that information.

In celebration of Julie Andrews' 90th birthday today, here is the opening sequence of Darling Lili, one of her most exquisite and quintessential performances on film: elegant, ethereal, entrancing. The winding, silver-thread melody and luscious orchestration are by Henry Mancini (of course),

None of it is even remotely funny anymore, but credit where it's due, the recurring claim by TFG that he ended the long conflict between Cambodia and Armenia -which I'm sure will come as a surprise to both countries - legit cracks me up every time he says it.

Imagine someone showing up at your neighborhood community event and proceeding to insult the host, their home, the amenities provided, all the other guests, the guests' friends, and all of *their* homes, and then expecting to be told how wonderful they are...

I love when the TikTok fashion influencers do one-word responses to celebrity gowns on the red carpet and they say something like "traumatizing" and you can't tell from either the tone of their voice or the dress whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

There's nothing more nerve-wracking to me in film or TV than an EVA to fix the solar array - because it's ALWAYS the stupid f**king solar array, why do they even keep putting these things on spaceships if they're just going to jam or bend or snap off in some crucial way & start flapping around??

I miss the days when in spite of other differences we might have at least we could mostly all agree that Nazis and slavery were bad.

"Anybody that's ever studied history in any sort of serious way knows that you feel a range of emotions, and 70% of the time those emotions are not positive emotions that make you feel good

Portrait of a cat who has triumphed (for today) in evading a wellness trip to the vet.

maybe its too blunt of an object but i will go to my grave thinking a big part of why we got here is a refusal to say dumb people and dumb ideas are dumb. we were too polite, and instead we said "that's an interesting take" when we should have said "shut the fuck up, you absolute dumbass."

NYT Connections is getting increasingly schizophrenic. It's either "things that are red" and "animals you find on a farm," or "homonyms for islands of Micronesia missing one letter."

"Although Americans take for granted that fame, once tasted, is addictive, it is possible simply not to want to do it any more..." A typically insightful and elegant essay by Adam Gopnik in appreciation of the inimitable & famously reclusive Tom Lehrer and the high art of political satire.

If the paparazzi and stan photos from the location shoots of The Devil Wears Prada 2 are to be believed, it's a movie entirely about fashion-forward people walking out of buildings and crossing streets, sometimes while talking on the phone.

I wonder how one gets added to the WhatsApp group chat of EU leaders? There has to be some serious shade getting thrown on there.

Man, Bernie Telsey is spinning that theatre Rolodex like a particle accelerator this season. #GildedAge

My mom used to describe a certain kind of person as SMEEVY - I think it was a coined word, a cross between "smarmy" and "skeevy," I've never heard anyone else use it, but I think of it every time I see Mike Johnson. The smeeve is strong with that one.

It's probably not officially in the etiquette books because it seems like something you shouldn't have to say, but I'm pretty sure that if you're dropping bombs on somebody you should take off your f****** hat.

I'm kind of loving it that at the rate it's going theatre social media will eventually create a complete performance-by-performance video record of every single time Rachel Zegler sang "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" on the Palladium balcony from the beginning of the run to the end.

Showing the exterior balcony of the London Palladium to Jamie Lloyd is like showing the moors to Emily Brontë. From a dramaturgical standpoint I honestly kind of love this.

Whenever Seth Meyers refers to Stephen Miller there's a crashing thunder & lightning cue like he's Frau Blucher in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, & it genuinely cracks me up every time. Grateful there's someone who can still make me laugh about any of this even for a second. Grateful (I guess) that I still can

Everybody look at my new cat! His name is Herbert Pocket. Gotcha Day was six wks ago and he's finally starting to feel at home, altho still v scared of noisy garbage trucks and random thumps from upstairs neighbors. #catsofbluesky#caturday

"The heights are aliiiive With the sound of wuthering..." What exactly is going on with the costume design here, Emerald Fennell?

Since the relative value of reading the classics - or indeed reading at all - seems to be up for debate again/still this week in The Other Place and elsewhere, here's a pretty decent response: "Wherever it is, whether in home, school, shop, workplace, yacht, airplane, or

Man, Stanley Tucci is really living his best life. And quite possibly several other people's best lives as well. (New series streaming on Disney/Hulu/NatGeo).

I notice we're not hearing about how many toy trucks and GI Joes little boys are allowed to have.

I'm going to need some clarification on this Five Pencils doctrine. Is it five pencils per person? per household? Per year? Per lifetime? How are we supposed to plan without this information?

A couple of days ago I came across a verb I'd never heard before: to immiserate (n.immiseration). It means the act of making others miserable, particularly through impoverishment. Finally a word for the one thing the GOP seems to be good at.

"[Because] they only have that night-time look, and that's a bit slapdash, isn't it..." -- Suzy Eddie Izzard

Amen, sister. *While I find the adult language apposite (and cathartic!), a G-rated version can be found on her home page.

Of the 29 "Legends of Broadway" photos by Mark Seliger for this week's edition of NY Magazine, these two might be my favorites: Bill Daniels, 98, still standing for independency as John Adams in 1776; and the unsinkable Dick Van Dyke, 99, as Albert Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie. Standing O, gentlemen!

"The wind is on my face, the sea is incredibly blue..." Sail on, William Finn. Peace and light.

Spectacular view of 100,000 people attending the #HandsOff march in NYC

The cringe level of the action in episode 2 of The Studio is so high that I've had to watch most of it crouched behind my sofa.

Many of us are already familiar with these, but if you aren't, or if you just need to hear them again, here they are given perfect voice, clear and pointed, by the mighty and indomitable John Lithgow.