a few months ago I happened to see this absolutely fucking incredible 60 Minutes piece where scott pelley hiked for days to get inside the earth’s largest known cave in vietnam and I was so gobsmacked I made my kids watch it; you should also watch it because it rules m.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfW...

sometimes I think about how there must be an open convo at nyt about whether and how to write an oped about the phrase “when it happens”

my kids are co-authoring what is essentially wings of fire fanfic using Google Docs, which is also how I do most of my work writing, and I am having a tough time with my somatic response to all the new edit comment notifications I am receiving

helllooooo friends please help us decide what to do for future patreon episodes, also one member of the podcast rejected this as a display image for this post but we won't say who www.patreon.com/posts/help-u...

the red wine vinegar he vacuum-sealed for me to bring back to my husband is made by Camino and it is quite good

you know, can't say i've ever thought about scott pelley this way before, but a manager saying "this is not actually productive. this is not an interview" and then pelley responding "it's working for me" is so so hot to me

spent the last month profiling jimmy kimmel, and it's a weird time for that guy! trump and kimmel both want the same thing, which is for kimmel to not be doing this show anymore. how does he make that happen without it feeling like a concession? unclear www.vulture.com/article/jimm...

this episode includes: - a story about alan punching a parakeet by accident - me briefly blacking out while yelling about apple tv's Sugar - a really satisfying conversation about The Suitcase

spent the last month profiling jimmy kimmel, and it's a weird time for that guy! trump and kimmel both want the same thing, which is for kimmel to not be doing this show anymore. how does he make that happen without it feeling like a concession? unclear www.vulture.com/article/jimm...

there are a lot of great parts of my job, but getting to write profiles for megh to edit is prettttttty high near the top of the list

it's (kinda) the end of late night as we know it and jimmy kimmel does not feel fine www.vulture.com/article/jimm...

catching up on summer house update

i love fact checkers my book has a brief reference to bluey furries, and i love that this line in the fact checked document is highlighted in green, indicating that my excellent fact checker decided this was a fact, did some research, and did indeed verify the existence of bluey furries

read this first thing this morning, came away with many thoughts about how weirdly hopeful i am about reality television??? i believe people will use AI for convenience and because it does whatever you ask, but i just do not believe people will ever watch an AI summer house

highly recommend gathering your kids around a browser window, typing this prompt in, and then hitting refresh over and over

discovered the teens are taking photos called “point fives,” which I think means the 0.5 wide lens on the iphone camera, except they don’t actually use that setting? They just hold the phone very close over someone’s face so it has a fishbowl effect this has been: dispatches from middle school

yes i have been informed that there's a trailer for apple TV's Sugar season two, which means it's time to repost the piece of writing i least regret posting to the internet in 2024 www.vulture.com/article/appl...

update i'm obsessed with their stupid little party city fog machine that sets off the smoke detectors every single time

every email from every middle school orchestra conductor should begin: I regret to inform you that your child has grown out of their dress shoes

i have some looming deadlines i have started new projects before fully wrapping up the previous ones the school year is ending and my calendar looks like what you see when you open up the floorboards and then call an exterminator should i start summer house right now

ah, the law and order svu finale, an episode of tv in which ice-t proclaims "i'm never going to retire and i'm never going to die"

the whole Kean situation would be egregious for anyone but it’s helpful added context that this man was already notorious for years of dodging town halls, interviews, public appearances and constituent engagement

for one reason and another I have found myself on r/jacktheripper and I truly truly love that every month or so someone else shows up to be like “hey guys, who do you think was jack the ripper”

peonies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yay it's monday!!

me: [two full minutes into an explanation of the tv series Wishbone] neighbor kid: can we just watch a video of it my husband: you just have to let her finish the sentence, we love her but this is part of it

can’t believe the culture is doing a fun cats revival before the kids who grew up on warriors books have broadway ticket money

Another busy week over at What's Alan Watching? Here's what you might have missed: First up, @kvanaren.bsky.social & I dropped the first episode of @tvisgoodpod.bsky.social, talking about Moms Do Crime TV, via Apple's new Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and the classic Weeds:

should be a busy morning for whoever edits the tommy westphall wiki page

All our picks and pans PLUS @kvanaren.bsky.social adds a new category to the format! extrahotgreat.com/ehg-615/

in which my editor did not remove the phrase “roomful of hockey hangers” www.vulture.com/article/off-...

very very funny to me that this podcast will be an attempt to find common ground between @sepinwall.bsky.social's fandom of Knicks supporters and legit TV creators and my fandom of queer Bones-obsessed librarians and bottle episode pedants podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

guys we gotta stay chill about Bones, please trust that I am On It, but we can't scare him away

the podcast is canceled

for many months, @sepinwall.bsky.social and I have been talking about how much we'd love to do a podcast together. we spend a lot of our life sending texts like "i need you to watch this thing and then tell me what you think," and at some point it just makes more sense to do it out loud, you know?

okay the clipping is much more wholesome than I was imagining

garden report: it’s blue star amsonia week

apparently the current subversive middle school prank in our area is "clipping," where you write funny things on a clip and then try to sneakily attach it to other kids' clothes or backpacks, which i learned about when i found 12yo frantically ransacking our craft supplies in search of clothespins

update!! his father says he has a "serious but temporary" illness, which he also describes as "a real illness" that "won't linger," and mike johnson had a conversation with him two weeks ago (?) that he describes as "short, very positive" www.cnn.com/2026/05/15/p...

sometimes it's easier to appreciate good important work when you have an example of what it's like when something is NOT helping and in that line, allow me to suggest to you that prime's hockey college romance Off-Campus is notably burdened by misdirected makeup artistry

oh no

One thing I hadn’t appreciated is if you start waking up at 5am every day you can fit SO many more cups of coffee into your morning

when I get to the end of this show (hopefully tomorrow) and this dumb hockey bro looks at this philosophy tutor/budding singer-songwriter and says “but looking at you, i finally get it. I finally see how two things can be true at the same time” I am going to absolutely LEVITATE

watching off campus, a straight college hockey romance, and this hunky shirtless hockey player just ran out into the street after his philosophy tutor/crush and yelled i DON'T UNDERSTAND KIRKEGAARD, HOW CAN THERE BE TWO TRUTHS

yyyyyyyup

hi i'm tom kean jr and i'm asking for your donations to help support my campaign we've been forced to reduce our entire recurring actor budget and as you can see, the only standing set we still have access to is this single room apartment left over from a side plot on bob hearts abishola

so my district's house rep, tom kean jr, has fully disappeared for two entire months, and his spokesman apparently told the nytimes that he is dealing with a personal health matter but also no one can see him because "there's no cameras where tom is" www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/n...

the more I write profiles, the more I’ve come to understand that the best part by far is calling up a bunch of other people and saying “so tell me about your friend/partner/boss/child/roommate”

guillermo for proof, taking up a collections basket for the television industry

spent the day at the Disney upfronts which ended with a very sweet moment where jimmy kimmel’s 11yo daughter went on stage to sing with olivia rodrigo, and then @ralter.bsky.social sitting next to me said, “oh no this is the movie TRAP”