I do not take cabs/cars much but I had to hop in a taxi tonight and can confirm: the screens now play, God help me, Newsmax

i just saw the 76 minute runtime

I didn't get to write it, but if you like all the same things as me (movies about artists, 1970s New York, artsy flicks with brief super-meta moments, Ben Whishaw) then PETER HUJAR'S DAY is for you

On DIE MY LOVE: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/m...

Hey, I’m leading the theater newsletter! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/t...

I arrived home around 7:30p to discover my home full of merrymakers for a surprise birthday party and it’s been quite a night!

This is 42, which means Fish Cheeks martinis and my suggestion that you go vote with your brain.

This Saturday at the Los Feliz 3, I'll be moderating a Q&A for the best documentary of the year, MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS. (Tickets and info here: www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/...) In the meantime, here's my interview with director Julia Loktev from over the summer.

A great day for New York, a city for everyone, except: people who don’t take their backpacks off on the subway, tourists and families who walk down the street in a horizontal line, people who stop in the middle of the street to look at their phones, you guys unfortunately have to go

Obligatory note that Didion wrote an essay on Dick Cheney in NYRB (“Cheney: The Fatal Touch”) in 2007. It is more or less what you’d expect from that sentence. www.nybooks.com/articles/200...

If I watch pretty much any video on my Instagram feed for more than three seconds Zohran Mamdani will appear in it

There are a lot of headline constructions that make me stabby but of them all this is the absolute worst

I wrote about the theme of a great deal of New York theater this fall: you might maybe leave the church, or it might leave you, but you can’t leave the music: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/t...

The news about Teen Vogue is terrible, the latest in the long list of corporate-owned media layoffs, closures, and shifting tone and coverage. There are so many great independent outlets, a list too long but this is a fantastic starter pack. PLEASE pick a few & support them if you're able.

Related: TikToks devoted to rocking out to “On Eagles’ Wings”; the ep of “We Can Do Hard Things” with the Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge; the entire premise of HBO’s SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE; and the unassailable fact that certain left-of-center political fundraisers should be ‘90s CCM karaoke nights

Over the weekend I published a piece on nuke movies, pegged to A House of Dynamite: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/m...

Something churchy has been afoot in New York's theaters this fall: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/t...

That’s helpful, thanks Google AI

Has anyone read any good books about why all American cults / homegrown religious splinter groups seem to originate within a couple hundred mile radius of Albany? (my hometown?)

Hope to see you in Astoria this afternoon! movingimage.org/event/the-st...

I remember the 2000 dotcom bubble too

"Many of the deals OpenAI has struck — with chipmakers, cloud computing companies and others — are strangely circular. OpenAI receives billions from tech companies before sending those billions back to the same companies to pay for computing power and other services." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Last minute costume idea

This was really good, in part because it’s always just nice to read your own experience described clearly but also, it’s so interesting! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

🧵Thread of cafes, restaurants, bars, bagel joints, etc offering free meals to SNAP recipients, for those who might need it, & so those who don't can give 'em their business. If you know of such offers in your area & don't see them here, please tell us in @'s. Here's one! toastedseattle.com

Hey former IBLP/ATI pals: if you went to Sound Foundations, shoot me a DM, there's a musicologist who is interested in talking to you

I am turning 42 in about a week and the number of Douglas Adams references I have been making recently should send me straight to nerd jail

BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER, Edward Berger's follow-up to CONCLAVE, is on Netflix now. It is not ... good, but it is very pretty, and it has a smattering of very good scenes for my boy Colin Farrell: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/m...

US canceled the visa of 91 year old Nobel laureate (and Trump critic) who teaches in the US www.reuters.com/world/us/nig...

Hah, of course I know all about the filmography of Zohran Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair, but I had not caught on to this credit in her film QUEEN OF KATWE (about a teen chess champ from the Ugandan slums and the coach at the missionary program who teaches her).

What is making me scratch my head is there actually is a concurrent, ongoing news story — Pope Leo moving to break up Opus Dei — where Dan Brown would make at least marginally more sense as a kind of “fun” commentator, though I would not really trust Dan Brown on the finer points of doctrine

I decided a week or so ago to start unfollowing people who clearly just post headlines for clout, and I am not regretting this decision

I do have to say that I am of German and Irish ancestry and even I was a teenager before I realized a number of my “aunties” (the preferred terminology in my family) were not related to me biologically at all, they were essentially my grandparents’ chosen family

It is a little weird how few NYC Marathon related posts I have seen so far this year on my various socials

My husband is in charge of all liquor purchasing in our house, simply because I learned long ago that he is way better at it, and last week he came home with “pancakes and bacon” whiskey. I regret to announce it is Good

A stat we don't talk about enough: Newspapers have lost 77% of their jobs over the last 20 year, more than any of the 532 other industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The best film of the year is finally coming to Los Angeles. Julia Loktev's extraordinary documentary MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS will be playing at the @amcinematheque.bsky.social Los Feliz 3 on Saturday, November 8. I'll be moderating a Q&A with filmmaker Julia Loktev and journalist Ksenia Mironova.

I taught from Didion’s 1988 essay “Insider Baseball” last week, the piece that crystallized the angle of my book back in 2020, but it’s this passage that’s been banging around in my head nonstop for a year and won’t let go. (She knew all this from being in Hollywood for a couple decades, of course.)

Finished copies are here and they are *stunning*

Somehow I scheduled myself to finish up my Didion workshop on Monday teaching “Sentimental Journeys” (on media/politicians’ magical narratives around the Central Park Five) and “Fixed Ideas” (on media/politicians’ magical narratives around 9/11 and the Middle East). Good times

I am usually pretty sanguine about writing — it’s a job, it’s labor, it’s what I do for a living — but for various reasons this week has been a real slingshotting from “I’m great at this” to “I am a hack and should never write again” and back again, repeatedly (I am not fishing I am just sharing)

Excellent thread. In my ~15 years in higher ed — mostly at places that would describe themselves as sympathetic to this idea — I’ve found that most people trying to tell you this is impossible / inadvisable is trying to sell you something

Loooove this Jesse Green piece about what BLUE MOON gets right and most Broadway movies don’t: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/m...

early! voting! commences!

When I was a student there, pranksters got some 30 or 40 of my peers to show up for a Christian horror writing workshop on campus with posters advertising his involvement (and RL Stine’s, for some reason). No one seemed to notice the ads didn’t have official Student Life stamps…

Incidentally, a certain segment of my followers will be pleased to learn that SCREAM director Wes Craven is among the distinguished alumni of Wheaton College

This is why the Internet was created. (It’s amazing.) youtu.be/nSre7kaA4gY

The 2024 doc "Union," about unionizing efforts at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse, is now streaming on the Criterion Channel

Settling in to watch SCREAM now; if you watch this weekend you can join us Monday

One of my favorite things about Threads is that every time you open it you see someone posting something like this, and every single person under it has seemingly never heard of the concept of engagement farming