I've seen this going around today and it's beautiful, so here's a gift link.

Sonny Rollins getting ready to go onstage at the Apollo Theatre in New York City, 1961. Photograph by Steve Schapiro.

Second anniversary of our Apple TV’s spectacular attempt to understand me asking for “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”

Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Munich, the first movie my husband wrote for Steven Spielberg and a film I still can't believe got made. I am obviously biased but...just watch it. I genuinely don't think it could be done now.

now to settle in and watch the greatest Christmas movie

I like being an uncle for the holidays because: Mom and dad are responsible, and will discipline you. Grandpa and Grandma are indulgent, and will coddle you. But the uncle... the uncle is unpredictable. The niece and nephew cannot know what the uncle will do, because the soul of the uncle is CHAOS

Good morning and happy holidays, here are some classic crime novels and more recent reissues I loved reading throughout the year, and I’m making this an annual tradition for the column:

I'm such a sucker for stories on artistic influences, and this one — about the influences on season 5 of STRANGER THINGS, a show with a singularly entangled relationship to its influences — is so well done and informative: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/a...

photoshoot of the year in the final week of the year www.thecut.com/article/rama...

meanwhile in Canada

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

Betty Reid Soskin, the country’s oldest living park ranger who lived an incredible life, has died at 104. When she turned 100 I had the honor of working on this profile of her, written by the great Jennifer Schuessler. An incredible story, beautifully told:

Tired: Die Hard is a Christmas movie Wired: How the Grinch stole Christmas is a heist movie

Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!

Did Costar hire Olivia Nuzzi or

remember how you could go to a carnival and pay for them to take your photo and put it in the cover of a fake time magazine anyway just thinking about that for some reason

yes friend yes they did

this is a good reminder of how things that are shitty but have been accepted as normal and inevitable can actually turn out to be abnormal and evitable with some science, time, education and political will

a tip to anyone writing about MARTY SUPREME: It takes place in NYC but the Safdies are from Montreal, as is Mordecai Richler, a titan of Canadian lit and the author of the very Marty-Supreme-ish THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ. these are all useful things to know!

UMich consumer sentiment (current conditions) at 50.4 is a new all-time low -- going back to data from the 1970s.

if the next administration doesn’t remove these I’ll go and remove them myself

it's giving

he did the meme

Basically Trump is trying to harangue America into believing that everything was horrible a year ago and perfect now, which Americans, capable of observing America, have already made clear they don't find convincing.

cool beans

MY 4-YEAR OLD: *calmly, while coloring a picture of the Grinch* If baby grinches die, we can eat them. If they’re clean. That’s ok

this great film is still on a lot of screens in NYC and is worth seeing on the big screen with a crowd

The Bostoo Yook Yarters are my favorite baseball squadron.

whatever else you think about the Steve Jobs gizmo revolution, once you interacted with an iMac, an iPod, an iPhone or, to a lesser extent, an iPad you just sort of got it. It seemed immediately like something that could improve your lived experience uhhhhh… not so much with NFTs. or the metaverse

just a collection of "inevitable" multi-billion dollar tech that was going to be the future of everything until everyone in the audience who was supposed to just get on board said "lol no"

hero

Adapting a deeply personal story in a way that makes the person who wrote it experience it all over again is a real kindness and a small miracle. There's been a lot of pain adjacent to this film, a lot of sad stories that touch it. But Reiner seems to have done his part with great kindness.

One of the great American traditions

CBS News's relentlessly-hyped "town hall" with Erika Kirk drew a mere 1.867 viewers Saturday at 8, barely beating a rerun of THE WALL on NBC (1.460) and finishing well behind college football on ABC (5M in the hour.) It also did fewer viewer than a regular 48 HOURS at 10 on CBS (2.14M.)

Gainwell he did! Gain thee well, Gainwell. butt-dialed fantasy football team finishes the year in first place at 11-3. now on to the butt-dialed playoffs!

this is my surprised face

There are only ~20 people in American public life

I spent this week rewatching a lot of All in the Family for work. It's not Rob Reiner's primary legacy, but it was one of the greatest quartets in TV history, and he was essential in the least rewarding role. He has a scene with Jean Stapleton in S8 that moved me to tears. Where I'll be for a while.

maybe if i make enough content, for free, to enrich the people who hate me, they'll finally listen to me

this is not behavior becoming of a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.

for my butt-dialed fantasy football team to prevail this week I need a very good game tonight from Kenneth Gainwell, who encouragingly sounds like a running back who would appear in PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

incredible things happening at the nazi bar

so much in his career to celebrate but let it not be lost that Rob Reiner, in directing SPINAL TAP, likely directed the funniest, most laugh-out-loudiest, most quotable comedy of all time like, not just a great comedy but the great comedy

I told a dad joke over Zoom and no one laughed. I guess it wasn't even remotely funny

the alternate covers pairing (often famous) people on the NYC subway sharing earbuds for @nymag.com's annual Reasons to Love New York are so so so so so so so good

I know there's a desire to stay engaged and updated but there's an equally valid counterargument that we must avoid the temptation to eventually make every single civic event, especially tragic ones, about the unhinged reaction of one particular prominent person

The cultural impact of Rob Reiner cannot be understated. Legend isn't big enough a word. It goes to 11. You can't handle the truth. As you wish. I'll have what she's having. I'm your number one fan. You guys wanna see a dead body? The very idea of a bucket list. The West Wing. All from his movies.

shouldn’t the large word be TEARING

The Bills vs Patriots game recap, a meme, again: