We interrupt today’s good vibes to bring you a dose of existential dread about data breaches. Alicia Keys sang “Concrete jungle wet-dream tomato” live on Saturday. And Joe Biden is … still alive.

ONLINE THINGS

What If Your Whole Digital Footprint Were Public?

We’re all a lot more vulnerable than we think.

For this week’s cover story, Bridget Read talked to people who have lived the nightmare of having every single thing they’ve ever done online become public knowledge. We’re getting used to hearing about this happening to public figures and people tangentially related to them — Blake Lively et al. — and also to corporate bigwigs like Sony-leak victim Amy Pascal. But it can, and does, happen to completely average Joes, too. Maybe it’s time to lock down all your stuff? Or at least change your password so it’s not “p@ssword!” I talked to Bridget about how we should be thinking about “privacy.”

The security expert you interviewed said we should quit using WhatsApp. Do I really have to do that?

For you and me, we’re not gonna start there. We’re gonna start with our passwords. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people I’ve heard from today who are like, “Oh my God, my password is my name plus 123.” What is more likely is that you would be one target among many, and so even having a semblance of resistance is actually what’s going to make a hacker move on. They’re gonna find your password in a data breach and then they’re gonna think, Oh, maybe Emily uses that for her bank, and we have her bank because of other data-broker stuff that we’ve found elsewhere. That’s a more likely scenario.

Okay, so what else should I be worrying about?

Well, if your texts do leak, it’s probably going to be because someone targeted the software you use. And we all just use the same ones. Having only five big tech companies is a huge problem for all of us, because it means that all of it is centralized and all of it is controlled by a very few people, and we have put our fate in their hands.

There’s a case you mention in the article where an employee is suing for wrongful termination after his employer found out, via a hack, that he’d looked at porn on his personal devices. What do you think will be the outcome there? Also, that’s terrifying.

Bringing your own device to work is a huge problem for all of us. So many legal experts I talked to said they’re shocked at how many companies do not give their employees phones, even huge Fortune 500 companies that can afford it. It’s a problem for them because we use our phones more casually than we would a work phone, and it’s also a problem for us because they can use what we do on it to retaliate if they want to.

You learned that Amy Pascal doesn’t use email anymore at all. I found that detail fascinating. Do you think more people will adopt that approach? Also, who can afford to adopt that approach?

The biggest implication of all of this is that the people who have access to the most sophisticated privacy technology — which is going to include walled-off networks where nothing is being hardcoded on anybody else’s cloud or servers — that kind of thing is going to be available to tech overlords, some sophisticated celebrities, and the wealthiest people in the world. That’s going to be an enormous luxury: True privacy.

KNICKS IN FIVE

Alicia Keys Threw the Theater Kids’ Knicks Victory Party

There were a lot of places to experience joy on Saturday, but this one was peak

Where were you when the Knicks won? I was so delighted to be supine on my couch, hearing the screams and honking and sirens from outside, because I was totally wiped from a day spent chaperoning my 8-year-old to Brooklyn Pride, Stop! That! Train!, and a pool party full of Russian lesbians. Best day of our lives, possibly? Anyway, the Knicks win was just the icing on the cake. Tom Smyth also had a good time at the Capitale after-party for Alicia Keys’s Tribeca documentary screening:

Not long after the end of the Knicks’ victory, Keys emerged in a Knicks letterman jacket — starting her performance from the indoor balcony before making her way down to the stage in the center of the party — where she performed songs that she grew up with (Barbra Streisand’s “Memories”) as well as her own hits (“Fallin’” had the whole room singing along like Oprah). But she wasn’t alone, bringing out Nas to perform “N.Y. State of Mind” as well as newly minted Tony winner Shoshana Bean (who played Jersey, a fictionalized version of Keys’s mother, in Hell’s Kitchen). Somehow making it all the way downtown from her Lost Boys performance at the Palace Theatre, Bean took the stage to blood-curdling screams (mine) as she delivered staggering vocal gymnastics on “Pawn It All” with ease. Nas and Shoshana Bean … together at last.

Truly, what didn’t happen on Saturday?

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POLITICS

Let’s Take a Moment to Reflect on Joe Biden’s Legacy

He doesn’t want it to be “allowing Trump to win.” Good luck!

This banger from our D.C. correspondent Ben Terris dropped over the weekend, and I fear it got lost in the Knicks festive chaos, so let’s pause for a moment to take it in. It’s full of bitterly delicious nuggets like this one:

Obama’s alleged role in Biden’s downfall is a particularly sore point in Bidenworld, even if Biden claims to hold no grudges. At an event in November billed as an “informal Biden-Harris White House reunion” at Kelly’s Irish Times, a low-key pub near Capitol Hill, people were grousing that they had to pay for the drinks themselves. “When the Obamas or Clintons have their reunions, it’s like a three-day all-expenses conference,” a Biden alum told me. “And we got a cash happy hour at an Irish bar by the train station.” The event’s organizer, former counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti, was “basically frothing at the mouth,” according to the alum, and holding forth on how people close to the Obamas had “betrayed Biden” and cost Democrats the election. “He maybe needed a vacation, or a therapist,” the alum said.

It didn’t help when Jill surprised everyone by showing up with two close aides. “Seeing them was like going back to your hometown Arby’s and seeing your high-school bully working behind the counter,” the Biden alum told me. “I’d moved on in my life, but they hadn’t.”

Should anyone close to Biden still be in public life promoting or writing memoirs? Probably not. Will they persist in doing so? Almost certainly.

Click Your Way Out

• “Celebrities reacting to the Knicks win” is a delightful genre of post.

• I hate to be predictable, but my favorite genre of “Knicks win reaction” is boys kissing.

• Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce spent Saturday night seeing Oh, Mary!

• Today is probably the last day you can buy a Father’s Day gift that will definitely arrive in time.

• How sex workers feel about their profession being depicted onscreen.

• Madeline Cash is anointed by the New York Times as her microgeneration’s literary spokesperson.

• It’s so stupid that Amanda Seyfried isn’t going to star in a Joni Mitchell biopic, but at least they got to hang out.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

ONLINE THINGS

We Unlocked a New Level of Weird New York

This week, our hometown was extremely itself.

Every week, Becca Schuh brings us the best of the platform once known as Twitter. It may be owned by an evil trillionaire but, like NYC, it’s our imperfect home.

We’re still riding the high of the historic Knicks game-four win. But we also got a new type of concert discourse (the limit may not exist?) and Rosie O’Donnell and Matthew Rhys having moments.

We’ve officially reached a new level of Weird New York.

When people say new abbreviations or use the word electric, I lose all ability to tell if they’re serious or shitposting.

These I can get slightly more behind.

Everybody is buzzing about Rosie O’Donnell’s face-lift.

Also: We’re in a Matthew Rhysaissance!

POP GIRLIES

Olivia Rodrigo’s New Album Is So Good, You Guys!

Can’t wait for my children to force me to listen to it so many times that I hate it.

Today marks the long-awaited (by Zach Schiffman, among others) release of You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, an album that my 8-year-old child is going to demand to listen to in its entirety on every long car ride my family undertakes this summer. And you know what? I’m more than okay with that. Olivia Rodrigo has depth and range, and her evolution from pop-punk references to the Cure/New Order references is working out perfectly. As Jason P. Frank writes of “Stupid Song,” which should probably have been the album’s lead single:

The emotional high point comes at the bridge, when the song transforms into a stomp-clap rhythm and Rodrigo shouts the lyrics with abandon. “Every night like the one before / Dream of you from like one to four / Positively and truly sure / Nobody’s wanted somebody more.” That’s the moment the song title clicks: It’s about the moment when your crush gets so unsurmountable that you become sure that “this is the most anybody has ever liked another person.” It’s not that Rodrigo is “stupid” or that all music is “stupid,” it’s that the early days of love make everybody act like an idiot, and this is an anthem for being ridiculous.

An anthem for being ridiculous: It’s the vibe of this moment in cultural history, for sure.

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BEAUTY

Brides Are Spending Big Bucks on Beauty

Take me back to the olden days when we just tugged on Spanx and hoped for the best.

Back when I got married (2014), preparing yourself for your wedding was mostly about hiring a professional to do hair and makeup, which seemed outlandishly luxurious, like being a celebrity for a day. In 2026, people are out here doing a lot more. Dare I say, the most. Fifty-five brides polled by The Cut reported wedding prep that included a bit of what you’d expect — Botox, fillers, GLP-1’s, spray tans — along with quite a few more big-ticket beauty treatments, like facial acupuncture, Chinese herbs for digestion, peptides, lymphatic drainage massages, and some light plastic surgery. And then there’s this gal:

For one 29-year-old bride from Washington, D.C., her 2026 wedding was two years in the making. She figured her overall budget would be high, but she hadn’t exactly planned to spend $20,000 on beauty procedures including peptides, weekly lymphatic treatments, Botox appointments (which her fiancé tagged along to, getting his own shots for his sweaty armpits) and uprooting her entire life to move to Boca Raton, Florida, for five months, where they got a boutique gym membership that whipped them into shape. “Boca is appearance heavy,” she explains.

I’m just going to start saying “Boca is appearance heavy” when asked to explain something wild.

Click Your Way Out

• As a mom who has sex, I found that I could relate to my fellow Emily’s postpartum dating journey. I also looked just like this when breastfeeding.

• I want these $22 Okabashi plastic slides but am not fully convinced they won’t slice holes in my feet.

• Is being annoying genetic?

• If you aren’t getting cultural recommendations from Samantha Irby, what are you even doing?

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

What with Pride, the Puerto Rican Day Parade, the Knicks game, and the heat wave, this is going to be either the best or worst weekend of your life.

MASTERMINDING

The Knicks Won in Spite of or Because of Taylor Swift

Zach Schiffman rounds up the new set of hidden messages Swifties need to crack.

In light of last night’s events, we forced Zach to write an emergency installment of “Masterminding,” his periodic column detailing the exploits of the entity that is Taylor Swift.

If Taylor Swift is trying to seem like a chill girl with completely normal interests, this week was her best attempt in recent memory. She appeared courtside at her alleged wedding venue on Wednesday night sitting with two of the three Haim sisters plus her cat’s namesake, Mariska Hargitay, in matching custom shirts designed by Alana Haim. Taylor’s shirt (and Mariska’s) read “Stevie Knicks,” honoring both the team and her idol. As she does at every awards show, Taylor appeared drunk, seemingly off of vodka sodas. Swift was loosened up enough to hug Kylie Jenner. She even completed the lyrics of her own song “Out of the Woods” with a fan. For fans of unhinged Tayfoil hat speculation, I present the letter A dangling from her jeans last night. According to T-Anon fans online, she has worn the letter A in every appearance since the iHeartRadio Music Awards in March. A is likely an Easter egg for her middle name, Alison. My Eras tinfoil hat is fully on right now, but there have long been suspicions that her 13th album could be titled Alison and will mark her full return to country (something Crazy Days and Nights alluded to this week). It was nice to see her at the game, her gargantuan fiancé, proving she knows ball and Aristotle. He wasn’t there to crush a drink for the cameras, and she got to be bejeweled.

Taylor also attended the premiere of Toy Story 5, dressed in a ripped-up curtain, without her fiancé. Maybe this week was her bachelorette party? Following the screening, she changed into a yellow dress covered in daisy appliqués (Daisies are extremely significant for Gaylors; you just have to trust me, and we will get into it another time) and sang a piano rendition of her song “I Knew It, I Knew You.” Travis was replaced by Randy Newman, and the pair performed a duet of his Academy Award–winning song “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” where neither of them sang on key in a beautiful way. Newman is an extremely good match for Taylor’s vocals — both have weird voices and are brilliant writers. Seeing them perform together does make you wonder, Why doesn’t she co-write the song with Newman? Even if “I Knew It, I Knew You” was identical to what we have now, the goodwill of co-writing with the legendary composer would certainly boost her Oscar chances. She and Jack Antonoff are going to have to work a little harder to get that statuette. The good news is that Taylor has already started. She gave a rare sit-down interview to 20/20, where she teared up about the new Pixar movie. As has been well documented, Taylor is a bad actress, so I do believe she was genuinely crying over the animated movie.

You’ll surely hear from me soon enough, as the American royal wedding nears. Whether or not it is actually going to be at Madison Square Garden is anyone’s guess. Tonight she’ll be at the spiritual sibling of MSG, the Marriott Marquis theater, which is hosting the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Maybe the shirt last night was an Easter egg, and Stevie Knicks will introduce her?

MONEY

Women Are Trying to Avoid the Fate of Belle Burden

We want prenup!

In Strangers, Belle Burden told a terrifying story of being very rich yet still vulnerable to life upheaval thanks to her dickhead husband’s insistence on an unjust prenuptial agreement. Bindu Bansinath sought out the stories of regular-rich and nonrich women who read the book and got inspired to shield themselves, via prenup or postnup.

One day a few weeks after the book came out, Manhattan divorce lawyer Sonya Witt was advising a woman who was about to marry a tech entrepreneur with an income in the seven figures. The woman had a good job in social media but worried her income would never be commensurate with her fiancé’s, especially if they had children and she had to take time off work to take care of them; she wanted things to be fair. “Have you read Strangers?” the woman asked Witt. “My goal with this prenup is to avoid what happened to Belle Burden.” In the original draft of the prenup, stocks were classified as separate property; after Strangers, the woman asked her fiancé to agree to a change ensuring that any deferred compensation earned during their marriage, like bonuses, would be equally divided if they divorced. “That one seemingly minor tweak could be worth millions for her,” says Witt, who’s seen something of a Strangers boom in her practice, where clients bring up the book on a weekly basis and seek out amended prenups or postnups.

In general, it’s always better to be prepared!

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MOVIES

May Friendship Like John Early and Kate Berlant’s Find You

The Maddie’s Secret co-stars have a very special bond.

Lucky Rachel Handler got to spend time with comedic genius actors Kate Berlant and John Early, chilling in an East Village park and talking about TV, theater, movies, and the history of their 14-year friendship.

Kate Berlant: I remember getting on the train and going home. I remember John texting me, “I’ll kill myself if I don’t see you.” Then I’m not kidding, I think we hung out either the next day or the day after that.

John Early: When have you ever said, “Let’s hang out,” and you mean immediately? You’re actually hoping the other person forgets it.

K.B.: It really was the falling-in-love thing of like, we were just inseparable. There wasn’t dating, there wasn’t any coitus. It was very lesbian. John quite literally would sleep over at my apartment. I had a roommate of course, and John would be sleeping in bed with me for many nights of the week.

What size bed?

K.B.: Full.

J.E.: It was not even a queen.

Getting to be the exact right level of famous with your best friend is the actual showbiz dream.

Click Your Way Out

• Scenes from last night’s orgiastic Knicks-win celebrations all over NYC.

• You can thank Christine Baranski for that, btw.

• There were other celebrities in attendance as well.

• Here are the Broadway shows that P!nk should star in.

• Get to know your 2026 World Cup WAGs.

• Can Portland’s Voodoo Doughnut make it here?

• Alex Chee read this story last night and everyone cried.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Have you picked out your outfit for Taylor Swift’s wedding yet? Clock’s ticking …

SPORTS

Chic Knick Tyler Kolek Is Short Enough to Wear Vintage

His secret style weapon is being six-foot-two.

There are a lot of impeccably well-dressed men in the NBA, like, so much so that there are many Instagram accounts solely dedicated to tunnel ’fits. But most of these guys are so gigantic that they have a hard time fitting into vintage designer clothes, a tragic Achilles’ heel that keeps them from being stylish in the way that’s accessible to normal-height civilians. Enter Tyler Kolek, who doesn’t get to actually play very often but does fit into vintage Armani, Prada, and Issey Miyake by virtue of being a mere six-foot-two. Last year, Sam Hine reports, he hired a stylist to engineer a glow-up, and the results speak for themselves. He’s got all the attributes that we look for in a 25-year-old heartthrob in 2026: floppy hair, good eyebrows, bone structure that could cut glass, and, perhaps most importantly, the intangible power bestowed on a very few: He looks even better in glasses. Keep an eye out for his outfits, if you’re into outfits, and for him on the actual basketball court tonight — maybe. He tends to only get playing time “when the Knicks are either up by a lot or down by even more.” Well, let’s hope it’s the former.

TELEVISION

I Guess We Have to Watch Criminal Minds Now

Connor Storrie has a four-episode guest arc on the long-running cop show.

Connor Storrie booked this gig pre–Heated Rivalry, and they rewrote the show to give his character more episodes because he was just that good. Let’s say we’re going to watch it. What do we have to know in order to vaguely understand what’s going on? So basically, there’s a division of the FBI called the “Behavioral Analysis Unit,” and they’re hunting down a network of serial killers who all linked up circa the pandemic. Storrie’s character, Lance Kingston (lol), comes under suspicion after being accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend. The show features Aisha Tyler and Paget Brewster, who both, among other notable achievements, dated Ross on Friends. Creator Erica Messer told Rebecca Alter that Adam Rodriguez’s FBI agent character “kind of alphas” Storrie, and in the photos he’s shown both brandishing a gun and being tortured or lie-detector-tested or something. Sure, why not! Other than catching up on Widow’s Bay, we’ve got nothing going on TV-wise except sports. I’m not doing Love Island again; that was a onetime thing.

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FILM

The Social Reckoning Trailer Is Here

At least Jeremy Strong’s Mark Zuckerberg voice is eerily great.

How do you guys feel about Aaron Sorkin’s whole … thing? For me, it’s complicated. On the one hand, Molly’s Game is perhaps the best plane movie of all time. On the other hand, The Newsroom epitomizes the kind of self-satisfied boomer neoliberal “just being outraged by injustice is enough” ideals that are, arguably, to blame for landing our country in its current mess. So I’m never going to be super excited about a new Aaron Sorkin movie! Even if it stars Mikey Madison (love her) and Jeremy Allen White (arms) and Jeremy Strong doing his very best soul-deep impersonation of Facebook’s founder:

That’s not Jeremy Strong, your brain tells you. That’s actually Mark Zuckerberg. Or, no, that is Jeremy Strong, because Strong is simply too recognizable to physically disappear into the role of Zuckerberg, but the voice clinches it. That is literally what Zuck sounds like. He’s got Zuckerberg’s flat affectation; his petulance, like when he describes himself as a “professional defendant”; and general air of unnerving self-confidence. I’m going to have nightmares.

So the movie has that going for it. Otherwise, the idea that the whistleblower scandal animating the plot is about finding out that Facebook worsens teenage girls’ anxiety and depression? As Vogue’s Emma Specter writes, “It’s crazy that there was ever a time when we didn’t know Facebook worsened teenage girls’ anxiety and depression.” And, honestly, thinking for too long about this movie is worsening mine.

Click Your Way Out

• An oral history of Steven Spielberg and his movies.

• The Knicks logo almost included the Empire State Building.

• Taylor Swift will be at the Knicks game tonight, bringing much-needed purely neutral vibes.

• Sam Reid is so thoughtful and smart about his Vampire Lestat performance, and I just want to give him a hug. Papa’s-orchard vibe for me with this guy.

• It’s time for elder millennials to stop being baby girls and start being women.

• Should you report your employee to HR for writing fanfic? Golly, I hope not.

• Would you enjoy a meal at Zoli? It depends on how you feel about nü-Williamsburg, garlic in your chocolate cake, and noise music.

• Shop vintage ties from Peter Som’s closet.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Now I turn my attention to rehearsing for Gen-X karaoke night. Hope to see you there!

FAIR-WEATHER FANDOM

Don’t Give Up on the Knicks!

Words of encouragement on a gloomy day in NYC.

Though I have picked up a weird amount of hockey terminology, lore, and superstition in the past six months, I cannot pretend to be a sports fan. Still, I am a New Yorker,* and as such, I am not immune to the excitement, tension, and immaculate vibes that have wreathed the city since April 23, when the Knicks began the winning streak that ended in a heartbreaking loss last night. Luckily, Will Leitch is here to give us all the pep talk we need today.

Winning a championship is really, really hard. It’s particularly hard against a seven-foot-six monster who spends his offseason with monks and his game-day afternoons sketching in the park with his sister. It was never going to be as simple as just winning 14 straight games and casually cruising to the Canyon of Heroes. The Knicks are — and always were — going to have to earn this. They are going to have to crawl and scrap and scrape and claw their way to every point. That’s what it requires to win an NBA championship. A sweep was never realistic. It’s always hard. It’s supposed to be hard.

Will is giving Coach Taylor vibes, and I love that for us.

*Not by J.Lo’s definition but by my own (the only credential you need is that you lived here on 9/11).

MOVIES

How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Steven Spielberg

Disclosure Day sounds completely brain-candy delightful to me.

Would you like to watch a big-budget blockbuster wherein Emily Blunt gets a visit from an otherworldly bird, then gains the magical powers of empathy and bilingualism? I absolutely would.

Disclosure Day can be messy, but much of its beauty lies in that messiness. It’s an astoundingly personal film, and we can sense Spielberg trying to feel his way through the conflicting aspects of his vision … The question of aliens has always been a spiritual one. Perhaps it represents postwar America’s attempts to grapple with the unknown and the infinite. (Wes Anderson also made a very good movie about this not too long ago.) The blinding lights of Close Encounters and E.T. (and even, from one perspective, Raiders of the Lost Ark) were holy, revelatory. Spielberg believes in God; he also believes in aliens. How exactly does one reconcile the two?

The short, spoiler-free answer: with a “shockingly moving” and “impeccably put together” final set piece, scored by John Williams. God, I hope it makes me cry. I could use a good cathartic weep.

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BEAUTY

Mary H.K. Choi Finally Found the Perfect Eyeliner

The Pool House author has exacting standards and enviable fine motor skills.

Mary H.K. Choi’s fourth novel — and her first for adults — is out today, and none other than Michelle Zauner calls it “culturally incisive and relentlessly smart.” A gal about town who’s about to go on a book tour needs a reliable eyeliner, but Choi’s was recently discontinued. For someone who has “executed a thick black line across both lids for the past three decades,” this was, understandably, a crisis. She tried 11 liners at various price points and availability levels and eventually landed on a more than passable dupe for her late, lamented L’Oréal Lineur Intense. Read if you care about black eyeliner and/or enjoy extremely perfect deployment of language, e.g., “Trust is everything in that first moment of liquid-liner contact. It establishes the fate of the whole enterprise.”

Click Your Way Out

• Cardi B has some choice words for Trump and compares Wemby to a giraffe (I think he looks like a praying mantis, personally).

• Sarah Jones took the time to debunk all the “hetero-optimism” points one by one.

• A checklist of everything you should do if you think you might get laid off.

• A $23.5 million townhouse that’s a tiny bit too close to a TikTok content-creation hub.

• Pair your signature fragrance with your mental-health diagnosis.

• The yaoi way (only way) to watch Love Island.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Did you know that game four of the Stanley Cup Final takes place tonight? I’m rooting for the Carolina Whatevers.

THEATER

The Tonys Hot-Boy Report

Ali Louis Bourzgui and Alden Ehrenreich won our hearts and also actual awards.

Jackson McHenry is currently asleep, as he should be: He attended the Tony Awards ceremony and then partied till dawn at the Carlyle with Megan Thee Stallion, Nicole Scherzinger, and the haunted-looking Victorian twinks currently starring in The Cursed Child. I got him on the phone just in advance of his richly deserved nap to talk about the best Tonys in recent memory and what made it so much fun, from the boldfaced names to the brand-new crushes to the amusing live-TV flubs.

One fascinating thing about the Tonys is that it brings together so many different types of famous people, from Broadway famous to TV famous to pop-music famous. Who was the most famous person you interacted with last night?

That’s the thing about the after-party; every sight line could be a different Who? Weekly call. Like, There’s Nicole Scherzinger talking to Megan Thee Stallion and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The most famous person I interacted with, to a normie, was probably Daniel Radcliffe, who somehow recognized me and remembered me from sitting in his show’s rehearsal for 30 minutes.

What a gentleman! Speaking of boys, unfortunately, as you know, I’m always thinking about boys. The hottest boys of the Tonys, to me, were The Lost Boys Tony winner Ali Louis Bourzgui, who made a brave and authentic speech in addition to being hot, and also, weirdly … Becky Shaw winner Alden Ehrenreich??

Not weirdly. We all agree that Alden Ehrenreich is incredibly hot in Becky Shaw because he is a really mean guy and, you know, unfortunately, that works. I did profile him, and he was lovely — very thoughtful and earnest in a literary straight-bro way, and it’s so charming that he is investing his time and money in starting a theater company in L.A. And we are disappointed that he has a girlfriend but also happy he seems to really like his girlfriend.

Let’s talk more about the vampire boy. It’s too bad that The Lost Boys seems musically meh, because now I really want to see it just for him.

Ali is so incredibly charismatic in that part. He’s really sexy. His voice is incredible, even if the music itself is disappointing. So it’s kind of worth it for the ride if you’re not spending too much on it, is my feeling.

What do we wish for him in the future?

I’m thinking of Raúl Esparza parts. He has that sort of rock-inflected voice, like, you know, Company down the line and, later on, an incredible Sweeney Todd. But it also feels like he’s someone who’d want to do something original, like the musical about the Arab Spring that he was in, We Live in Cairo — I hope he and the Lazours collab more. It’s weird — boy leading roles are either so ingénue or so villain, and he needs a textured role for someone who isn’t going to just be a tenor.

He’d be an amazing Judas, but that’s my go-to for everyone.

Encores’ Jesus Christ Superstar Judas, you got it. Do it on the Lost Boys set; stop performing The Lost Boys and just do Jesus Christ Superstar, but they fly.

Wow, my dream musical! Speaking of flying, P!nk, as expected, did stunning aerial feats, including hitting the high note from Wicked while lifting Neil Patrick Harris up with her thighs. I am in awe of P!nk. What do you think was the funniest joke or gag of the evening, and what do you think was the joke that really didn’t land?

The whole “Leading Lady Marmalade” opening sequence was perfect. Pasek and Paul are really good at awards-show writing. “Gitchie gitchie Lesley Manville”? “Gitchie gitchie Carrie Coon”? That was undeniable.

I laughed out loud when Megan Thee Stallion was carried in and then said, “I don’t even know those guys. They was just two strangers carrying some cake.” Wordplay!

The worst was when they did the sort of odd free-speech riff that was like, “What if free speech is just all these celebrities having insane opinions?”

Especially after Ali Louis Bourzgui’s speech; you can’t gesture toward the power of free speech and then land on something politically neutral and milquetoast. Though I did like that it gave us a moment with Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, Brooklyn’s second-most-famous mom and dad.

Boerum Hill parents out on the town!

The Emmys are for Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, but last night was Rose and Bobby’s time to shine.

TV

The Vampire Lestat Just Gets Weirder and Weirder

Incest, orgies, and vampire bodily fluids, all in the first episode.

Vampires are having a moment (two vampires in the culture = a moment). Rebecca Alter is recapping The Vampire Lestat, and you should be reading her recaps even if you don’t watch the show simply to know what the televisual medium is currently capable of. Here are some highlights to watch for — including one giant spoiler, so stop reading now if you’re not into that.

• “I am exhausted, disgusted, titillated, scoffing, giddy, and cringing at episode one, ‘Detroit,’ but this is part of Rolin Jones’s grand plan, and we must trust the process.”

• “Sometime between the season-two finale and now, there has been ‘the attempted extinction of the Y chromosome across the continents,’ but it wasn’t all Lestat’s fault.”

• “Lestat’s loving all the attention and crowd-surfing, because for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot, we see what I think is meant to be a blood-cum stain on his pants at the end of the number.”

• Using Daniel Molloy’s rock documentary as a framing device is “part Her Smell, part Hedwig, all Lestat.”

• “Why is the Vampire Lestat even giving out candy to trick-or-treaters to begin with? Delightful!”

• “Lestat has a threesome in the elevator on the way up to his suite, but when he gets out on the top floor, the regional vamps — called the ‘Fang Gang’ — are lining the hallway, all trying to kill him.”

• “That’s not Louis he’s been texting. It’s his damn mother, the Vampire Gabriella. She mends a wound on his face with a caressing hand, and then the two make out, intensely, on the cheap hotel bed.”

Creator and showrunner Rolin Jones did tell Roxana Hadadi that he thinks the show’s viewers “want to be punched in the nose all the time.” It’s only the first episode and I feel beaten to a bloody pulp, but I like it!

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BOOKS

The Ana and Din Mysteries Are a Perfect Summer Beach Read

Join me in preparing for the release of the third one, A Trade of Blood, on August 4.

I’ve been recommending Robert Jackson Bennett’s first two Ana and Din mysteries to everyone I encounter IRL lately, so I thought I would officially recommend them in this newsletter as well. Please join me in a universe not quite our own, where detective Ana Dolabra — a cranky old lady with eerie powers of perception — joins our narrator, angsty himbo cyborg Dinios Kol, to solve mysteries that often start small and then wind up threatening the very bedrock of the Empire. “Ugh, I’m not into sci-fi or fantasy,” I hear you saying. As recently as last year, I might have turned up my nose, too, but since then, I’ve become genre-pilled. I encourage you to join me, at least for the next couple of months. Summer is not a time to read literary fiction.

The really clever thing about these books is that they provide all the easy pleasures of a classic whodunit but also include vivid and original world-building, which is no easy task in today’s crowded marketplace. “But, Emily,” you demand, “is there also an understated hint of romance now and then, and is anyone at least a little bit gay?” Reader, I think you already know the answer.

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• I’m hearing there’s a basketball game tonight? Here’s what to expect.

• My beloved indie animation phenomenon The Amazing Digital Circus blew away the competition at the box office this weekend!

• Everything that went down at the Bound reunion screening and talkback.

• Spencer Pratt lost to Nithya Raman, and he’s posting through it.

• Nikole Hannah-Jones is opening a bookstore-bar in Bed-Stuy.

• Supportive, un-matronly swimsuits for 60-somethings, or really anyone with a rack.

• Let’s all use deodorant this summer! Please!

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Stay safe out there tonight, New Yorkers! Don’t climb any lampposts I wouldn’t climb!

MASTERMINDING

Taylor’s Oscars Campaign Is Giving Diane Warren

At least the new single is better than all of TLOAS.

It’s me, hi. Unfortunately, my Taylor Swift decoding has come back for this newsletter to discuss the two media properties most beloved by both children and aging millennials: Swift and Toy Story. Last night, Swift interrupted pop-girl summer to release “I Knew It, I Knew You,” a song full of harmonica and sax and classic Taylor Swift–isms (memorizing things, talking about cars, someone standing in the light of something).

How did we get here? On April 30, a countdown appeared on Taylor Swift’s website with a classically hideous yellow-and-blue font. That week, Swift emerged from the San Vicente West Village looking like Dorothy Gale, but with a yellow mini Dior purse that we now know was meant to invoke the Toy Story logo colors. Some level-one Taylor Nation antics followed — capitalizing the letters T and S in the lyrics of every track five in her discography, swapping the seagulls on the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album art for clouds, and, eventually, putting up billboards across the world reading “TS” in Toy Story typeface with no less than 13 clouds. It felt like kindergarten-level Easter eggs, but maybe that was the point, given the target audience.

The song, which comes extremely close to sharing a title with a Gracie Abrams song, reunited Swift with her longtime producer Jack Antonoff. After the national nightmare that was The Life of a Showgirl, it’s a welcome return. Disney execs teased the song as Swift’s comeback to country music, which, truthfully, is a stretch. It sounds a lot more like Bruce Springsteen drag (otherwise known as Bleachers’ last three albums). My Gaylor ears immediately perked up hearing the phrase “like brothers,” a dynamic also invoked in the Reputation track “Call It What You Want.” That entire verse feels Karlie Kloss–ified — “What I thought would be the last time I saw my friend / But love has ways of bringing things back to life / All you said was ‘Hi’” — and follows rumors this week that Swift’s former best friend will indeed be invited to her upcoming wedding and that the pair are on good terms.

The song is far from the tearjerker many fans were expecting. The promotional lead-up to “I Knew It, I Knew You” has been tied to Jessie, the cowgirl abandoned by her owner in Toy Story 2 to the devastating “When She Loved Me,” by Sarah McLachlan. It felt safe to assume Swift would be attempting to one-up “When She Loved Me,” but this cheery song is more in the spirit of Randy Newman’s songs for the franchise. It’s hard to imagine a sob-inducing sequence that features it — but corny millennials contain multitudes. It’s extremely clear what Swift wants here: an Oscar. Her most recent attempts have been lackluster at best. “Carolina,” for Where the Crawdads Sing, was a forgettable dirge for an even more forgettable movie. “Beautiful Ghosts” is genuinely one of Swift’s best vocal performances to date (even with the weird British accent) — too bad it was for Tom Hooper’s Cats. Even the woke 1.0 song “Only the Young,” for her own documentary Miss Americana, was only good enough to eventually be used in an Eric Swalwell (!!) campaign ad. But her most aggressive play for an Oscar to date was not an original song but her 2021 “short film,” All Too Well (10 Minute Version). She screened the film at both the Tribeca and Toronto film festivals. She even participated in Variety‘s “Directors on Directors” alongside Martin McDonagh. Whether she genuinely thought she could get that nomination or if the whole thing was a ruse to save her relationship with Joe Alwyn is anyone’s guess.

Given the reception to The Life of a Showgirl, “I Knew It, I Knew You” hopefully ushers in a much-needed Swift shift. The Academy has made it clear that if Swift wants an Oscar, she’s going to have to work hard for it, Diane Warren–style. This song was released 283 days away from the Oscars (2+8+3 is 13 … sorry), and it’s exciting to think about Swift back in campaign mode, rubbing shoulders with Cristian Mungiu and Christopher Nolan and other people who don’t even know the terms “bad bitch” or “savage.”

Swift is masterminding her Oscar chances by picking Toy Story; every installment of the franchise thus far has earned an Original Song nomination, and half of them have won. Since 1989 (the year Swift was born, in case you forgot), 12 animated films have taken the category. Which, obviously, means that if this song wins, it would be the 13th. If TLOAS taught us anything, it’s that Swift’s mid-30s have been consumed by jealousy, and the surprising stickiness of KPop Demon Hunters‘s “Golden” both on the charts and in the vocal cords of children surely pushed her into Bob Iger’s office.

The real test for “I Knew It, I Knew You” will be if you can hear it being belted at pickup — like recent chart-toppers “Let It Go” or “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” To my childless ears, the song is almost too pleasant to become a kid-friendly earworm. Not since the Eisner era of Disney has a children’s song been such an easy listen. For babysitters across the country and fans worried about Swift’s career trajectory after enduring “CANCELLED!,” the song’s country-tinged soft rock is a relief, but does that matter enough to a 6-year-old? It’s going to be a long 283 days until the Oscars, and we’re all guaranteed to hear that opening harmonica riff too many times. We’ve got more important problems to attend to right now, anyway. Overnight, the Olivia Rodrigo wall was painted blue.

REVIEW OF REVIEWS

The Feel-Good Pleasure of a Pan

Haters, steal a page from our magazine.

Ever since critics fawned over The Life of a Showgirl last October, I’ve been personally preoccupied with the state of modern criticism. That’s why it feels so refreshing to read a true pan. Today, our architecture critic Justin Davidson pointed out the megalomania filling every corner of the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

“After a while, though, all the professions of sincerity and thanks, the constant invocations of the one true POTUS, and the worshipful exhibits upstairs give the whole place a cultish, nostalgic gleam. The forgers of the future have become custodians of an optimistic past. Maybe the building is just right after all: an immense tombstone for a generation’s dream that Americans are united by a foundational idea.”

Last week, our restaurant critic Matthew Schneier trashed one of the city’s most anticipated openings, Marcel, at the Breuer Building. It did not live up to expectations.

“For all the toque-wearing chefs milling about the open kitchen, the cooking feels catered. It is dressy but unexciting, meekly seasoned and reticent except when it is passionately oversalted. A painterly prettiness distinguished an appetizer of leeks vinaigrette with poached pears and Kampot peppercorns, but it came beached on a truffle sauce so sandy in color and texture that it reminded me of lake silt. A gratin of cod ‘petals’ lacked crunch, dissolving into a mushy puddle; lobster-tail ‘Giverny,’ roasted with pineapple in a turmeric-ginger cream, sounded appealing but tasted flat upon its arrival. An $88 half-portion of sole meunière, that upper-crust standard, felt underadorned, skimpy, and baitlike.

Delicious! Plus music critic Craig Jenkins hailed Ariana Grande’s snoozy new single as “one of her worst.” Maybe she should take a page from Swift’s book and stop working with Max Martin.

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WEEKEND PLANS

Have You Ever Gone Skinny-Dipping in Staten Island?

One photographer lived to tell the tale.

Speaking of returns to form, Ryan McGinley’s first solo exhibit in New York since 2018 was shot all over the city in the middle of the night, including some not-so-PG nude scenes. He even went to Staten Island! Remarkably, McGinley and his models had only one run-in with the police.

It happened, McGinley told Sam Hine, while shooting on the West Side Highway. The cops “got on their loudspeaker and were like, ‘You call this art?’” How about that. Not only is the NYPD ruining Knicks watch parties, they’re out there cosplaying Jerry Saltz. McGinley’s show opens at Jeffrey Deitch on June 13.

Click Your Way Out

• No, Regina Hall won’t talk about the Kevin Hart roast.

• Embarrassed you don’t have a 212 number? Imagine the horror of a 465 area code!

• Don’t trust a brain-dead Swiftie like me about music; trust Cat Zhang and stream Naomi Scott.

• Crossword

• Horoscopes.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

I’ll be on the carpet at the Tony Awards on Sunday. Email dinnerparty@nymag.com and tell me which shows I should ask nominees about getting revived, and follow along on Instagram. I am probably just gonna do Seussical again until it actually happens.

STUNTS

Fake Rock Star Plays Real Show

One night with everyone’s favorite gay bloodsucker.

Rebecca Alter joined 2,800 goths, influencers, and theater kids at the Beacon Theatre on Tuesday evening to see a unique bit of promotional cheese: Vampire Lestat star Sam Reid and a live band performed for a beyond sold-out crowd, delivering mean-spirited monologues in the French accent Lestat has retained over his centuries-long existence between glam-rock numbers composed by the show’s series composer Daniel Hart, who also plays guitar in the band. A few snapshots from this one-of-a-kind spectacle:

• Hart looking like “a yassified David Lynch.”

• Eric Bogosian getting more applause than any other cast member (which is only fair).

• The Lost Boys director Michael Arden “and his husband, Andy Mientus (in a collar with a lock on it).”

• “I entered the theater behind a couple of gay guys who must have been invited as influencers or friends of producers. ‘Are you a fan of the show?’ asked one. ‘Not really,’ said the other. ‘I’ve only watched clips through YouTube Shorts, which is how I watch most TV shows.’ The first guy nodded like that was not only normal but acceptable.”

• “As he melted into the mic stand and eye-fucked execs in the good seats, stretching the limits of his leather pants, Reid grew progressively funnier, sadder, and crazier behind the eyes until, at one point, he erupted into a jig.”

• “So many unhinged Twitter avatars in one room, theater kids have never been more powerful!” —rosedommu

THEATER

Let’s Get Excited for the Tonys!

This Sunday, clear your calendar.

For people who care a lot about Broadway but, even more so, about live television and spectacle, our “Knicks finals” is coming up. What to know:

• You can watch Laura Benanti and Tituss Burgess host the technical awards starting at 6:35 p.m. on Pluto, and you should.

• The actual show starts at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+.

• It will be hosted by P!nk, who will almost certainly fly.

• P!nk’s jokes are being written by Amber Ruffin, which is a good sign.

• P!nk’s opening number is by Pasek and Paul, so that could go either way.

• Here’s a list of all the nominees.

• An incredibly detailed breakdown of what might or might not happen can be found in the latest installment of our Stage Whisperer newsletter, which you no doubt already subscribe to.

• P!nk wrote this, let’s not forget, and she should perform it on Sunday, for Pride.

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ONLINE THINGS

The Timeline’s Message Is Be Gay, Do Crimes

Becca Schuh reports from another week in the trenXches.

It’s summer! It’s the playoffs! It’s Pride Month! New York is wilding out! Hunter Biden is posting! We’re discovering the strange roots of common nicknames!

But you already know the regular New York News — Knicks, etc. Instead, I bring you …

1. An earnest subway moment

2. Curtis Sliwa in mourning for …

TIMES SQUARE RED LOBSTER

Meanwhile, someone is picking out a linguistic pattern in newish Brooklyn bar names, and now I cannot unsee it.

Everyone is celebrating Pride Month in unique ways.

Great week for people who love to Talk About Names.

Hunter Biden has returned to his home planet (posting).

Vincenzo Barney … a name that left our consciousness as quickly as it entered. I think he has a point here!

I agree, let’s do the purge but it’s for crimes like this:

Click Your Way Out

• The Look Book documents a fro-yo line and midriffs being so back.

• Kurt Vile’s daughters sound so cool — listening to CDs on their Discmans and watching Ren & Stimpy like it’s 1997.

• Could Donald Trump please just not come to the next Knicks home game?

• At NYU and at least 15 other schools, one year of college now costs upward of $100,000.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

“Equal Rights (Not Gay)” > “I Knew It, I Knew You.”

DESSERTS

Surviving the Ice-Cream Wars

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen is on a quixotic mission to regain control of his company.

Carrie Battan isn’t just a Survivor expert, though she is writing a book about the show. She’s also a hard-nosed reporter who recently spent a lot of time with 75-year-old Ben Cohen. Lately, Cohen has been having a difference of opinion with Unilever, which bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000. Jerry Greenfield, who co-founded the company with Cohen, resigned in 2025 to protest Unilever’s alleged thwarting of Ben & Jerry’s stance against Israel’s war on Gaza. Cohen, who remains on the company’s payroll and is somewhat of an unofficial mascot, has recently launched a campaign to “Free Ben & Jerry’s,” bringing together a coalition of institutional investors to try to buy back the company. I spoke to Carrie about whether his mission is doomed and whether there’s such a thing as ethical ice-cream consumption under capitalism.

Carrie, what’s your go-to ice cream?

Ice cream has gotten out of control in this country, particularly in New York City. Everybody’s trying to jam too much in there. I’m a crazy ice-cream addict. My go-tos are Trader Joe’s mint chocolate chip or vanilla, and I really like Tillamook vanilla and chocolate.

If it’s gotta be Ben & Jerry’s, what’s it gonna be?

Americone Dream, for sure.

Phish Food for me. Okay, so I’m standing in the ice-cream aisle and trying to be an ethical consumer, but there’s something dark about all the brands. Breyers is also Unilever. Häagen-Dazs is Pillsbury. Van Leeuwen is backed by private equity. Jeni’s has dealt with allegations of employee mistreatment. Is Ben & Jerry’s my best bet?

I do think buying Ben and Jerry’s, even in its current state, is the closest you can come to ethical ice-cream consumption, unless you have a really hard line about not spending money in any way that does not support Gaza, which I don’t think is possible in America. I do think that the people who work at Ben and Jerry’s proper are all treated well. They work really hard to source ingredients from places that are both high-quality and ethical. That said, the vast majority of people are not thinking about politics when they buy Ben and Jerry’s.

Well, thinking about politics every time you buy something is exhausting. Ahaha, I’m trying to figure out how to have this conversation without accidentally admitting that I shoplift lemons or something. But yeah, you have to pick a lane. Mine is that I don’t buy books from Amazon.

It’s almost more important to consume things in a way that does not feel spiritually corrosive to yourself. For example, I don’t actually fully understand the economy of food-delivery services, but I just know based on how it makes me feel when I do it that it’s bad, both for me as a human being and for the world.

Do you think Ben has a chance at buying Ben & Jerry’s back?

On paper, it’s unwinnable. However, in just reading about the history of Ben and Jerry’s, he’s pulled off so many crazy things — legally, financially, entrepreneurially, and from a marketing standpoint — that I wouldn’t be totally shocked if he did succeed.

MEDIA

60 Minutes ‘Bloodletting’ Leaves Employees in Tears

It’s not every day that your boss gets publicly canned.

Charlotte Klein is here with the latest on how things are going over at Bari Weiss’s CBS, where most recently, a longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, Scott Pelley, was fired for refusing to bend the knee to new executive producer Nick Bilton. On a conference call, Weiss told staff that she had attempted to engage with Pelley to “find a way back,” which he then characterized in a statement as “lies.”

He also said Weiss & Co. were unwilling to answer questions about why they had fired a raft of prominent 60 Minutes journalists the previous week, including beloved executive producer Tanya Simon, a bloodletting that has now escalated into a mess that risks the future of the entire program. I’m told people were crying at the show’s midtown headquarters on Wednesday.

Could Weiss have handled it all differently? “I think there’s managerial incompetence. Even if you have disagreements with talent, you have to find a way for there to be a graceful transition,” said one CBS staffer. “It sounds like Pelley didn’t make that easy, but you still have to find a way to do it.”

The situation absolutely sucks for people whose jobs and lives are affected, but can we be forgiven for finding the Morning Show–style melodrama of it all exciting?

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PUBLISHING

Is AI Slop Taking Over Literary Magazines?

Well, no. Or at least, not yet.

This week, for Book Gossip, Jasmine Vojdani talked to the people who read submissions at n+1, Joyland, Kismet, The Yale Review, and other small magazines to see if the recent hubbub over a suspiciously AI-sounding short story being hosted on Granta’s website — not to mention the whole Steven Rosenbaum thing — had freaked them out at all. The answer is not really.

Unlike news organizations, lit mags have the benefit of taking their time. Per n+1 co-editor Lisa Borst, lit mags are a “zone of beautiful, countercyclical inefficiency. We publish pretty infrequently. The work isn’t meant to be super-easy to digest or to write.” It’s an intensive process that involves the type of back-and-forth between editor and writer that Borst believes would double as a screen for AI. “The question is, ‘Can this person nimbly respond to your suggestion or defend their own work?’ And if they can’t, that to me is the biggest red flag,” she said.

I yearn to be part of a zone of beautiful, countercyclical inefficiency sometimes!

Click Your Way Out

• Actually, it’s not gay-vampire summer: It’s the Strategist Summer 100.

• This is how to see a Knicks game if you’re a billionaire.

• An essay about marrying into extreme Christianity and being groomed into the perfect tradwife.

• Shop Andrew Kuo’s closet, including an ai -fryer, an air mattress, Adidas high-tops in Knicks colors, and a $1 eight-pack of Gatorade Frost.

• If you have a hypermobility spectrum disorder (all hot girls do), a $50 buckwheat pillow might give you the best sleep of your life.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

A pint of Phish Food would really hit right now, actually.

Our new TV obsession is here, it’s queer, get used to it. Also, Robin Byrd is still gyrating, and loneliness influencers aren’t here to make friends.

TELEVISION

Let’s All Get Really Into The Vampire Lestat

All the reasons why the AMC gay-vampire show should be our next obsession.

Roxana Hadadi visited the Toronto set of The Vampire Lestat to see the blood-drenched vampire rock star in action. For those new to the show, which was called Interview With the Vampire in its first two seasons, here’s a quick recap of what you missed: Vampires Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac used to be a thing, but their relationship was, let’s just say, a little bit toxic. They had a “daughter,” the tragic eternal-child vampire Claudia, but she’s now dead dead. Louis has moved on and is now with the vampire Armand, who has his own complicated relationship with Lestat. To complicate things further, Louis has told the world about Lestat in a best-selling book published by journalist Daniel (Eric Bogosian, having a ball), who’s also now a vampire. There! All caught up. As season three begins, Lestat is embarking on a new career as a rock star. If you’re thinking Hmm, maybe this could be the thing that finally permits me to escape the cottage where I’ve been trapped since late November 2025, you and I are on the same wavelength. Also on that wavelength: the people making this show.

“If ‘Yes, Shane Hollander, but a shower of blood’ sounds good to you, then watch The Vampire Lestat,” says executive producer and writer Hannah Moscovitch, who is friends with Heated Rivalry creator and fellow Canadian Jacob Tierney. “Theirs is beautiful. Ours is fucking dark-sided.”

Also to come in season three, per Roxana: “an incest story line that puts George R.R. Martin’s bibliography to shame” and a direction in the script that says “He drops the vertebrae like dice.” Perhaps more to the point, Lestat (Sam Reid) simply does not seem to own a single shirt. We’ve had hot-girl summer and brat summer. Is America ready for gay-vampire summer? Here’s hoping!

FILM

There’s Still No One Doing It Like Robin Byrd

A documentary introduces the public-access pioneer to a new generation.

Mike Albo interviewing Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story’s star is a match made in gay heaven. Now 71, the enterprising former porn actress booked downtown-famous guests and shot her own show, which beamed messages of safe sex and queer positivity onto the airwaves of anyone who had cable access in NYC from 1977 to 1998. Now, she mostly hangs out on Fire Island, enjoying life and caring for her dog and her ailing husband, Shelly. But she’s game to relive her glory days.

After the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. in 1990, the new operator started scrutinizing the program, which was by then making real money from selling ads, including for phone-sex lines and adult theaters. “They would tell me, ‘You can’t put your hand in your pussy. You have to see all five fingers.’ So I’d make sure that we saw five fingers,” Byrd says. “However, if you were a guy and you put your finger in your butthole, that was okay. I was like, ‘Well, well, boys, spread your ass cheeks!’”

She still hosts a tea dance in Cherry Grove twice a month, BTW.

INTERNET THINGS

Why Are ‘Loneliness Influencers’ Having a Moment?

TikToks about living alone and having no friends are officially a thing.

“How introverted can a person be while also making public-facing content about their private lives?” asks Rachel Pick. The answer seems to be, well, pretty introverted, actually.

After deciding she no longer wanted her Instagram account to focus on her dog, Devon Noehring, a full-time influencer based in Phoenix, said she was “throwing stuff at the wall” as she figured out how to rebrand. “I did a vlog about a Friday night. I don’t have a lot of friends that live near me. I almost feel ashamed of not having some fun, crazy plans,” she said. “So I spilled my guts. I was being vulnerable, and that video blew up.” Noehring now posts “single introvert” content to 357,000 Instagram followers. Whether the audience is other lonely people seeking assurance or voyeurs simply looking to raise a superior eyebrow, it’s clear that social isolation is now a bankable way to build a brand.

Speaking as someone who goes into the office in an attempt to find a moment of peace, I’d posit that another audience might be people who don’t exactly crave being single and being alone but might occasionally wish to microdose it.

Click Your Way Out

• The political complexities underpinning the World Cup.

• Everything you need to know to pretend you’ve always been a Knicks fan.

• Queer Eye’s Karamo opened up about how the “toxic” environment on set contributed to his relapse.

• Are tankinis the worst of both worlds, or kinda cute? Your call.

• Cursed headline: “Martin Scorsese Is Embracing AI”

• Cat Zhang asks MUNA an important question: F/M/K Karl Marx, Connor Storrie, Young Miko.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

BOYS

Everything Silly Hudson Williams Said at the Canadian Oscars

He was on one last night.

Every year we tune in to the CSAs with bated breath to see which Canadian movies and TV shows will go home with prizes. Just kidding, obviously, no, we don’t. I’m so sorry to Canada, but I can barely stay awake until the end of the Oscars. This year, though, Heated Rivalry swept the awards with a record-breaking 16 awards (out of 18 nominations), including a Best Performer win for Hudson Williams, who is my close friend even though I have never met him (and I sincerely hope never to meet him). Here are the funny things he said and did last night.

• Interviewed after the ceremony, he said, “It’s just amazing to see that there’s more Canadian content that’s coming out that’s resonating with people, and it shows that we don’t need to go … we don’t have to shoot somewhere else for Canada. We can shoot Canada for Canada and be proud of it, and it spreads, and it permeates, and it could be like ubiquit … asdfghjk … across … I’m drunk.”

• While accepting his Best Performer award, he closed his speech by saying, “If I could cut this award down the middle I would, because if these gay yearning little bottom eyes didn’t have a big sexy Russian to feast upon, my performance wouldn’t be as good … so to the honorary Canadian Connor Storrie, I share this award with you.” Are you kidding me. “Gay yearning little bottom eyes”??? I can’t. I simply cannot.

• While Jacob Tierney was answering a question about what to expect in Heated Rivalry season two, unprompted, for no reason, Williams simply said “hole.”

• Sometimes he just looks so confused, and I hope he never figures anything out.

Contacted for comment, Rebecca Alter (a Canadian) noted that the awards also featured Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie star Jay McCarroll winning Best Performance in a Leading Role (Comedy) and Honey Bunch star Grace Glowicki for Performance in a Leading Role (Drama). “What a country! Best year ever for Canadian media.” Indeed.

MUSIC

The Only Pride Playlist You Need

Cat Zhang and Jason P. Frank curated music to get you through June.

Happy Pride! Stay hydrated and remember your SPF. Let’s hear from Cat and Jason about how this playlist came together.

Cat Zhang: A Pride playlist from a zillennial gay guy and bisexual hag who love to chat about the latest and greatest in pop (and pop adjacent) music. We tried to keep things current, high BPM, and true to our tastes, though we made a few concessions — still no Reneé Rapp, though, sorry! I would estimate 90 percent of the playlist is actually LGBTQ+ artists and then we have a select few straight divas who are spiritually important to the gay community (a.k.a. Kylie Minogue). I’m always trying to find ways to promote new music and mostly thought about how to represent each category — including asexual. The origin of this playlist is that I really like “Think of You,” by Tsatsamis, the new British gay pop star.

Jason P. Frank: With my selects, I definitely leaned into the very gay-guy idea that Pride is both about having a delightful time with your friends but also about the psychosexual games of one-upmanship with gay acquaintances. Hopefully this will help our readers in the “taste” category. Specific faves of mine: Underscores (could have put the whole record on there); “On My Own,” by Shamir (our asexual anthem); and perhaps the best song of the 2020s so far, Hikaru Utada’s “Somewhere Near Marseilles.”

Cat: Relevant credentials: Jason, interviewer extraordinaire, is responsible for the public beef between Jordan Firstman and Heated Rivalry and recently chatted with Andy Cohen. Me? Early fujoshi reporter, constantly in gay situations for work (jiu jitsu with Katy O’Brian), interviewed Chappell Roan before she was famous and while she was on mushrooms.

More From New York Magazine

SHOPPING

Men Have Many Good Options When It Comes to Shorts

Our “Ask a Picky Guy” columnist offers his expertise on summer legwear.

Should men wear shorts? Duh, obviously. But should they be big shorts or small shorts? Michael Zhao weighs in on the controversy. He styled one of the bigger pairs with socks and Birkenstocks, which is a look only a tall man with inborn panache can pull off. “Try them on if you have the chance, but don’t force it if it doesn’t feel right. It’s hard to look good in clothes you don’t feel good about.” Wise counsel. Our favorite pick of the bunch of shorts might be the Buck Mason 5.5’’ Cord Beach Cruiser shorts, which have a nice retro feel and also work great on women.

Click Your Way Out

• Euphoria is over, for good.

• BTW, are you guys watching Widow’s Bay? I am now. Good stuff.

• Sometimes a slightly corny novel hits the spot.

• Becky Shaw writer Gina Gionfriddo is great at meanness.

• Where are the World Cup WAGs of 2006 now? On Instagram, mostly.

• After their early first marriages end, some people embark on a post-divorce Rumspringa.

• Whither the first-date wine bar Frog? We’ll be following this story.

• Attention, my fellow Franz-stans: It’s time to lock in.

• New York subscribers get free Champagne this month!

• No one tell my kids about this.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Wow, I’ve been in the game for a while now. Here’s an essay I wrote about an eventful period of my early career for The Cut in 2020. And look at me now: still blogging.

ONLINE THINGS

The Week We Converted to Catholicism

Da Pope vs. AI, roommate discourse, and a cautionary tale about meme deployment.

Welcome back once again to Becca Schuh’s timeline, where someone’s always up to something. While I remain Jewish, I have always loved Catholicism’s camp-maximalist aesthetic, which has never been expressed better than in this short film. Also, someone moved out and took all the spoons, and you should maybe send a screenshot of the “killing myself in front of you” meme next time.

One day, I will read the Pope’s 42,000-word manifesto against AI (maybe), but today I will simply be reading tweets celebrating it.

We have a FABULOUS new interpersonal dispute on our hands this week: Someone is angry that their roommate moved out with their silverware, and the ratio-ers have descended.

The discourses have collided!

It just feels really unfair to me that this show exists and I was not contacted?

I find the concept of biking to the airport so obscene, like a novel ending with 9/11. Encouraging people to take public transit to the airport (which I will also not be doing) is one thing, but biking to a flight is a bridge too far!

People are very split on whether this person is insane or a documentarian for making this reference in an early dating conversation. For me, this reference is a trump card, so I have to hand it to the poster, although I do acknowledge the POV of “you’re too online, you’ve lost context.”

Okay, I need us to get real: What are the odds we all know this guy and he is our friend?

POLITICS

Let’s Get Real About Spencer Pratt’s Chances

TL;DR: potentially a spoiler, probably not a real threat.

I’ve had a hard time getting Katharine McPhee’s bastardized rendition of “The Best” out of my head since the Smash star turned trophy wife sang it at a fundraiser for a star of The Hills turned opportunistic Republican mayoral candidate. Which means I’ve already spent too much time thinking about how annoying it would be if a Trump-endorsed reality TV person won political office. It’s reassuring to hear, from Ed Kilgore, that this is very unlikely to transpire:

Spencer Pratt’s candidacy may be the best thing that could have happened to Karen Bass. If he edges out Nithya Raman for a general-election spot, and even if he thrills conservatives everywhere by running first, he’s almost certainly toast against a Democrat in a general election (much like Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton). A Bass-versus-Raman general-election contest would, for obvious reasons, be quite different in tone and the outcome far less clear.

That doesn’t seem like a great outcome either, tbh. Meanwhile, there’s only one mayoral candidate who has received the endorsement of artist Lisa Hanawalt.

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MEDIA DIETS

The Canadian Kids’ Podcast That Keeps Mandy Moore Sane

Stars are really just like us, in that they will do anything for peace in the car.

Imagine being Mandy Moore and showing your kids Tangled (she voiced Rapunzel) and having them just not be that into it! Being a parent is ego death, part infinity. But one thing her kids do love is Gardenkeeper Gus, a Canadian podcast that sounds very soothing and which I will try to get my kids into the next time we’re all trapped together on some interminable road trip:

Anyway, the show is literally just about Gus, this 8-year-old kid who sounds like a 6-year-old kid, and he’s doing stuff like picking a pumpkin or making soup, or picking vegetables in the garden to help his mom. There’s always some sort of task that he has to do, or he’s going on a picnic with his friends. All the episodes are very sweet and very calming, and all three of my kids like them. They zone out and they get to use their imaginations. I don’t understand what happens with these podcasts that don’t get a second season, though. It feels like such a no-brainer and a low lift to do more. They’re just seven or eight minutes. I can think of ten adventures off the top of my head that Gus could go on, and it would all be wish fulfillment for me because all we’ve got now is just those 12 episodes.

If I were Mandy Moore, I would flex my star power and executive-produce more Gardenkeeper Gus episodes; she clearly has the vision!

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• DO NOT READ THIS until you’ve watched the series finale of Hacks.

• A great essay about the imperfect but compelling Richard Gadd series Half Man, including an extended metaphor about male armpits.

• Drag queen and environmental activist Pattie Gonia is being sued by Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing company, which is a terrible look for the latter.

• A Grub Street Diet from someone who doesn’t drink alcohol and thus finds the same pleasure I do in sampling different mineral waters.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

I’m jealous of everyone who isn’t attempting to pull off a successful 11th-birthday party this weekend.

FOOD

Where the Media and Finance Elite Actually Eat Lunch

We don’t have a Goop Kitchen yet in Fidi, so we make do with 100 other slop-bowl options.

Recently, my colleague Tammie Teclemariam sampled the fare at the first Goop Kitchen outpost, which is operating out of a ghost kitchen in midtown; reporters from Business Insider soon followed suit, spending $95 on lunch for two. Devoid of soul and ambience as the enterprise may be, everyone seems to agree that the food is pretty good, and we’re looking forward to its inevitable expansion to our own work neighborhood: Manhattan’s historic and slightly weird Financial District, where bankers and media people spend most of their waking hours. The prices may be wrong, but we’re ready for a new lunch spot because we’ve tried everything else already.

In an ideal world, I’d set aside time every Sunday to meal prep, then set aside a meditative ten minutes every morning to pack a nourishing homemade lunch into a Lalo bento box. The world, as you’ve probably noticed, is somewhat less than ideal. In reality, I order an overpriced bowl of whatnot at least three times a week. I polled my co-workers to see what everyone else thinks has the best bang-to-buck ratio and, as a bonus, won’t send you into an afternoon food coma or give you food poisoning.

• Taïm: I don’t want to wade into geopolitical controversy here, but the chicken shawarma bowl is really good. Also, it’s far enough away from the office that I feel virtuous about the walk.

• Westville: Healthy, delicious, expensive. The crispy goat cheese salad, specifically, gets raves. Ordering Westville is equivalent to going to a Pilates class, IMO, and costs about the same.

• Inday: This is my co-workers’ favorite slop by an overwhelming majority. People cited its proximity and its affordability, especially if you order via ClassPass (which has food?), and they shouted out the karma bowl, the salmon, and the “chicken tikka masala over half-rice half-salad.” I feel that Inday is too salty, and also I hate going into the weird, sad underground mall where it’s located alongside …

• Naya: … which one co-worker feels has become “unorderable” since they “took away jalapeño.”

• Brasa: Peruvian bowls. I don’t believe that humans were meant to ingest quinoa, but this chain has its fans. It’s also in the sad underground mall. One co-worker specifically shouted out the “big corn” (canchitas).

• Korea2Go: Cited for sheer quantity of food. Claims to have the world’s best banana pudding. (“It’s fine.”)

• Sweetgreen: Specifically, “the peach and burrata salad they have only in the summer that is truly so good.” In general, though, we can all admit that Sweetgreen is somewhat gross, right? Old heads remember when the first Sweetgreen opened in Nomad in 2013 and was actually incredible. The kids making TikToks where they talk about how much they long to be living in 2015 as an early BuzzFeed employee should add that data point to their fantasies.

• Chopt: “The only bowl company doing salads like it’s still 2017,” because the bowls are still vertical.

• Just Salad: But only for the cilantro-lime-chicken warm bowl.

• Springbone: Only in cases of dire emergency. “I always regret a bowl purchased there.” It is also, sadly, the closest option.

BOOKS

Publishers Have No Idea How to Keep AI Out of Their Books

The system has always been flawed. Now it’s proving newly vulnerable.

Magazine writing is fact-checked within an inch of its goddamn life, but the rules for nonfiction books have always been: There are no rules! This often comes as a surprise to readers and writers alike, but if authors want their books to be professionally fact-checked, they must typically hire a checker on their own dime. Now that AI is out there hallucinating quotes and facts — as in a recent scandal where a book about AI was found to have been generated in part by AI — nonfiction books are getting more wildly inaccurate than ever. Charlotte Klein asks: What’s the plan here?

“I’ve always felt that, despite my ethical holdups with AI, there should be a more in-depth conversation on what things it absolutely shouldn’t be allowed to be involved with,” said one editor at a major publishing house. “Nobody seems willing to have that conversation.” An editor at another publishing house said their company sends authors a guide about not using AI in certain ways, “but it’s not legally binding. Once you’re at the editing stage, this is basically a business of trust.”

Perhaps future contracts will be negotiated in such a way that publishers will be forced to take more financial and legal responsibility for books’ authenticity and veracity. (Also, cover authors’ lunches.) Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so!

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TECH HOES

‘The Hottest Girls You Know Are Getting Into Electronics’

Cat Zhang brings us news about a growing movement: Hobbyist queer and femme computer geeks are making “cyberdecks” — Polly Pocket–ish homemade mini-laptops — out of spare parts. These devices are not only cuter than Apple products, they can be off-grid survival tools, e-readers, digital typewriters, or any other customized thing its creator wants. Best of all, this movement exists outside the walled gardens of big tech, relying on open-source resources shared within the community. Twenty-nine-year-old new-media artist Mattaniah Aytenfsu is a prime example of someone who is working to prove that you can be anti-corporation but still pro-technology:

“Mathematical systems and computation show up all across history and indigenous cultures,” she says, bringing up the example of kente cloth, which is woven in intricate sequences that you could consider algorithms. (Female knitters were some of the earliest programmers.) In her work, she explores how tech can be “a source of care versus a source of control,” she says, attuning us to our planet, communities, and selves.

This is all very heartening! Not only are the children dressing like they’re in the 1995 movie Hackers, in which Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller make out in a pool and he wears a red latex dress, they are also literally hackers. Good job!

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• “I watched a nearby diner ask for and receive black latex gloves for manhandling his poulet rôti.”

• How Qween Jean came up with those eye-popping Jellicle Ball costumes.

• Gayle King still remembers every detail of that time she caught her then-husband in flagrante with her best friend (“mint-green panties”).

• Zohran ripped a cig mid-marathon. Whatta man.

• Lin-Manuel Miranda and Cardi B picked five finalists, and now we vote on a 2K jingle. I’m torn between Allegra’s and Amanda’s.

• Is it possible for a backpack not to be hideously ugly?

• Counterpoint: A cute hat to buy if you like New York and also sports.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

I’m not going to see the Heated Rivalry parody musical and you can’t make me.

ADVICE

Should You Kick Out Your Smelly, Depressed Roommate?

Two advice columnists (one emerita, one current) debate a thorny question.

In today’s “Going Through It,” columnist Amy Rose Spiegel answers a particularly tricky question from a reader whose roommate, a friend from work, is having a really hard time. Unfortunately for the question writer, the hard time is manifesting in bad smells, unwashed dishes, lateness with the rent check, and — perhaps worst of all — an evil cat who steals any food that’s not nailed down. Amy Rose’s advice is compassionate and correct: “No more texting, no more setting meetings, no more adding even more looming dread and anxiety to something that’s already hard for your friend. (Anyone who has been depressed knows the misery of falling short like this.) Time to be really direct and clear.” I talked to Amy Rose about how I might have answered the question differently, and also how you know when it’s time to pull the plug.

I’ve been both of the people in this letter. And even so, I still think the letter writer has another option that you didn’t offer in your (excellent, maximally actionable, deeply empathetic) advice. I would ask the roommate to move out. Why didn’t you go there?

I sense this letter writer isn’t ready to make that request. She would see it (rightly) as all the more destabilizing to a friend who’s already having a hard time, and she’d wonder if she’d been fair, given that she’s been communicative about some, but not all, of her needs. I also think she’d want to point to clear requests for resolution if it did get to the point that the roommate couldn’t make significant changes here, which is maybe not so far off, but which I don’t think we’ve arrived at yet. I have, for the record, asked a friend, whose cat was intolerable, to pay rent or move out.

I see your point, but I also think the letter writer has a right to protect her own mental health, and being comfortable in your own home is a huge part of that. This isn’t a best friend or a close friend — it’s a “friend you know from work.” And for me any one of these things would be a deal-breaker.

I differ from some advice columnists in the sense that I love saying “Just break up” when it comes to romantic relationships, plus cutting and running in many other scenarios. Being decisive in service of a better life is like high-fiving God. But I try to be judicious about when a circumstance doesn’t warrant that.

What if being asked to move out is the “Whoa, my life has really spiraled out of control, it’s time to Get Serious Help” wake-up call that this person needs? Sometimes helping a depressed friend can shade into codependency.

That’s so fair, and I do think people are at real risk of letting that happen if they don’t decouple the house issues from the “You need help” issues in how they address them. My answer asks the letter writer to share clear, solutions-focused boundaries. She will not be paying her roommate’s rent or accruing late fees, let alone paying them. She won’t be training hell’s own feline. She can feel empathy for this person while needing the apartment problems to change. If the apartment problems do not change, she can and should find a different roommate.

Damn! You’re right.

JUSTICE

Why Cristen Giangarra Is Standing Up to Lyft

Seven years ago, a Lyft driver raped her. Now she’s suing the company, and she won’t settle out of court.

The criminal-justice system does not, unfortunately, work the way it does on Law & Order SVU. As Cristen Giangarra tells Andrea González-Ramírez, the process of holding a billion-dollar rideshare company accountable for hiring a driver with a criminal record has been protracted and deeply painful. Still, when the company offered to settle with her, she said no.

Lyft has made an attempt or two to settle — I said “no.” It came with confidentiality or some other type of string. As much as I want this to be over, I always come back to the question, What is more precious to me? That’s my voice. Declining the settlement didn’t necessarily make me feel in control, even now. The control over what happens will lie in the hands of a jury of my peers. A lot of people don’t get to this point, and I have to believe that that is going to help someone along the way if they chose to do this. I feel this righteous desperation for this billion-dollar company to face the reality of these decisions that they’re making because this is a human toll that they’re gambling with. It’s not acceptable. They can do more to keep people safe. To choose not to, to have any “acceptable” number of reportable events is not okay. It’s not something we should allow to continue. I don’t think my life gets to be reduced to a data point of any kind.

The trial is set to begin June 8.

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CELEBRITY SHOPPING

Dr. Mika Yasuda Has Great Taste

Or anyway, the actress who played her does.

It’s not normal that I’m still watching Grey’s Anatomy as it prepares to enter season 23, but I have never claimed to be normal. One recent loss (but indie film’s gain) was Midori Francis, who peaced out at the end of season 21 after having adventures like living in her van, dating Helm, and secretly working at Joe’s Bar. Honestly, the show hasn’t been the same without her. She eats a third of a jar of pepperoncini a day, owns a sincerely chic cat tree, and sneakers she can both hike and go out in (they’re $295 but are also cute).

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• It would be easy to mock Rosie O’Donnell for writing a Substack poem about getting a deep-plane face-lift, but I’m not gonna. She’s perfect to me.

• Summer House reunion recap, because misery loves company.

• Exposure therapy can help rid you of your crippling fear of, e.g., birds, but not forever.

• Yesterday’s vote made history at the Park Slope Food Coop.

• Everlane’s founder is launching Everlane 2.0 — with “no venture capital, no private equity.” Bonne chance!

• This is an all-timer. “Indigenous knowledge … I think?” is my favorite part.

• Shop Sierra Tishgart’s closet.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

There wasn’t school today, again, but there will be school tomorrow, thank goddess.

BOOKS

Leave Belle Burden Alone

What does the memoirist owe her readers?

On Friday, The New Yorker published an article by Jessica Winter about court documents that “complicate the narrative” of “financial peril” that the extraordinarily wealthy heiress Belle Burden “wove” in her best-selling memoir, Strangers. If you haven’t read Strangers but have read this article, you might come away with the impression that this is a case of a memoir being thoroughly debunked by subsequent reporting.

If you have read the book, you might notice that Winter’s article hinges on a narrow reading of the text and a cherry-picked selection of quotes from the marketing push around its publication, focusing on its relevance as a cautionary tale for women about the importance of financial independence. But Strangers’s larger story, from which it derives much of its emotional impact, is not about money at all. Rather, it’s about a marriage that Burden’s husband ended suddenly and unilaterally for reasons she says she still doesn’t understand. No one has contested that version of events.

Could Burden have been more specific about the size of the enormous trusts she stands to inherit someday in the section of the book concerning her worries about losing her family’s homes? Probably!

Should every book come with an appendix that includes the author’s tax returns? Fun as that would be, it’s not generally understood to be something writers owe their readers. A more pertinent question might be: Does knowing that Burden has a great deal of money coming to her, none of which was accessible during the time period she describes in the book, really complicate the narrative all that much? Should she have ceded any claim to her husband’s income during their marriage, when he all but required her to stay home with their three children, simply because she was already rich enough? While I feel as persecuted as the next renter-class Brooklynite (maybe more so), I wouldn’t necessarily push Burden up against the wall first when the revolution comes.

Scenting blood in the water, online sharks circled around Winter’s story immediately. It’s fun when we perceive someone high status to have been brought low; even more fun when that person is a woman who has made the cardinal mistake of writing in the first person. “Society heiress Belle Burden’s vast inheritance is exposed,” trumpeted a Daily Mail headline, which is nonsensical even by the standards of a Daily Mail headline (what does it think an “heiress” is?). One person, whom I will keep anonymous because I’m nice, tweeted that Burden had “lied more than James Frey.”

We seem to have a variation of this same conversation almost every time a woman’s memoir climbs the best-seller list. This sort of fact checking is just one way of puncturing credibility, of finding a reason – and really any reason will do – why this particular woman doesn’t deserve to describe her own experience. Once you start noticing that pattern, you realize that “this particular woman” turns out to be … actually pretty much every woman! It’s a wonder anyone still subjects herself to the ritual humiliation that publishing a memoir entails. But I guess that’s what the money is for.

PENIS NEWS

Men Are Freaking Out About the Size of Their Dicks. Again.

With porn, the “catching print” TikTok, and “looksmaxxing” culture, we’ve lost sight of what constitutes a normal schmekel.

Have you seen dating coach Anwar White’s “catching print” TikTok? If no one sent that to you back in March, this whole conversation doesn’t apply to you. Please accept my heartiest congratulations on being a gold-star lesbian. Everyone else: Okay, so we’re all newly aware of conversations around dick size, it feels like, and today Brock Colyar gets into why and also what men are doing in order to remedy situations they feel unsatisfied with. Filler injections can add girth, but not length. Exercises called “jelqing” and “dick-ups” exist. But aside from practical solutions, what can be done about the deeper (harder, meatier, etc.) issues such as … what does the heightened concern about symbolic masculinity signal about Our Society As A Whole?? Also, does size matter?

“I didn’t know how sensitive men were about their penises,” says White, reflecting on the aftermath of his post about catching print. Judging by his DMs, men were broadly furious about the video. But he believes that what those men actually fear the most is losing power. “This trend was about women having more knowledge than they had before to game the system. ‘I don’t have to sleep with him to know what he’s packing,’” he said. But neither could White help feeling a little bit bad for the men. “I think there’s a hyperfocus on the way we look with GLP-1’s, with plastic surgery, with hair implants,” he says. “Men are going through a lot right now. Things aren’t as stable for them as they used to be.”

All of this is very sad for men, genuinely, but you might forgive the women hearing of these struggles for feeling that some chickens are perhaps coming home to roost. As one of Brock’s female interviewees put it, “Men kill us, so we get to talk about their dicks at brunch.”

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CELEBRITY SHOPPING

The Tools Marcel Dzama and His Son Use to Make Art

Sharp objects galore.

It’s no surprise that painter Marcel Dzama, who’s perhaps best known for creating some really cool album covers, likes to make art with his 14-year-old son. Perhaps more surprising is his very chill attitude about letting kids play with knives. Of his favorite box cutter, he says, “I would say probably don’t let your kid use it until they’re at least 7 or 8. You do have to be careful with them. And teach them how to use it. There’s a lock on the back, so you can open it for them and just have just a little bit of a tip that’s coming out so you won’t injure yourself, and if it does break, it won’t really cut you too bad.” Even better, they’re only $1 a pop. What could go wrong!

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• The eight best movies at Cannes, according to our critics.

• Nicolas Cage gives it his all, but can’t save Spider-Noir.

• There’s lots to love about I Love Boosters, but it’s still “artistically frustrating, even on its own terms.”

• Sometimes when you take away a child’s iPad, chaos ensues.

• Under a million: a 1,280-square-foot, 2-bed, 2-bath co-op … in Jackson Heights.

• Heidi Klum thinks this is the best-tasting bottled water.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Going to take another break from Twitter to go back to watching Lestat.

INTERNET THINGS

John Travolta’s Cannes Beret’s X Account

A snapshot of this moment in history from Becca Schuh.

What a week on Becca Schuh’s timeline! She found lots to enjoy: a funny hat, the concept of being a North Carolina influencer, some lost lore that resurfaced, polyamorous Mr. Feeny, and Hudson Williams being a litbro.

There’s lots of interesting news out of Cannes this week, but one particular hat rose to prominence.

In fact, it is I who will be monitoring the situation (and the best reactions to it).

I must point out the sheer number of these tweets from this specific user, 7/11 Truther DaveMcNamee3000. His dedication to Beretgate is remarkable.

Yes, and? I would follow that X account and be soooo happy about it.

The concept of being a Raleigh, North Carolina, influencer.

An amazing cultural artifact resurfaced!

NO ONE is marked safe in this polycrisis, not even Mr. Feeny.

This is the lore I live for!

Last but not least … Hudson Williams book club when?

He later added a book-recommendations highlight to his Instagram profile. Fans reacted normally.

When reached for comment, Emily said, “It me,” and, more inscrutably, “I do not want this problem ever to go away.”

POP GIRLIES

New Olivia Rodrigo Breakup Anthem Just Dropped

“The Cure” is sad and sort of rockish.

“It don’t matter how your love feels anymore / It’ll never be the cure,” sings Olivia Rodrigo. Also: “Used to play a game in my head when I’d date a guy / Tally up the girls he fucked ’til I start to cry.” We’ve all been there, Livvy! The song’s complexity makes it hard to immediately latch on to; there’s a chorus and a pre-chorus and a bridge or two, and they all sound pretty similar, which is confusing — the song is called “The Cure” but could just as easily be “The Antidote” or “Unraveled.” The soaring part where she sings, “I’m unraveled,” is leading to speculation that it might be the album opener (her upcoming tour is called the Unraveled Tour). “It sounds like the song you use during a season finale of Pretty Little Liars in the best way,” Zach Schiffman tells us. Give it a listen and see what you think! The album is out on June 12.

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TECHNOLOGY

This Man Lived Without His Phone for a Month

Couldn’t be me, but seems doable for some.

Right off the bat, Jeremy Rellosa admits that his experiment with the landline-only lifestyle would be nigh impossible for people with different life circumstances: “I don’t have a partner, kids, pets, or any big responsibilities other than taking care of myself, and I know this experiment would be incredibly difficult if other people relied on a more consistent level of communication with me. But in reality, most of my friends are texting me about the NBA and Premier League, so I can afford to hit pause on that for a while.” The biggest challenges he encountered include not being able to check for boogers prior to a date, having to print out MapQuest directions, and forgetting to print out his boarding passes prior to arriving at the airport (he had to break out his phone for the last one). He also found that he missed some Slack work conversations that happened prior to his arrival at the office, which is telling: If we all went phone-free, we’d only be able to work when we’re in front of our computers. That would be better for everyone’s mental health, but it will never happen. Oh, well! If you want to microdose the no-phone lifestyle, Jeremy has compiled a list of tips, tricks, and gadgets to help you to do so.

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• The Late Show With Stephen Colbert took a bow last night.

• Congratulations to Rebecca Alter for writing the best headline of all time.*

• What does the Subway Takes guy eat?

• You need sandals. These ones are all on sale.

• The Park Slope Food Coop will vote May 26 on whether to ban Israeli products, an issue so contentious that political officials are weighing in.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

*Including the time I tagged a Gawker post about a dentist named Fernando “Do you heal the gums, Fernando?”

TELEVISION

We Survived Survivor 50!

The maximally anticlimactic finale would have been predictable even if Jeff hadn’t spoiled it.

Let’s get this out of the way: Jeff Probst spoiled the outcome of Survivor on live TV. Be warned: more spoilers ahead! Other than that, the last episode of this season of Survivor was, in a word, bad. It was also more than two hours long. It felt much, much longer. You might be questioning my judgment, considering how recently I started watching the show. Perhaps “true fans” of Survivor want 100 million hours of challenges interspersed with 1,000 million clips of booted contestants chatting live with Jeff in L.A. If that’s so, I don’t want to yuck your yum. The experience was not to my taste. But what actually happened, in the midst of all that filler? Well, Tiff got eliminated, as we’d known she would. And then Aubry won a challenge, positioning herself to win it all. And then she did! “It really was a night of no-duhs in a season of no-duhs,” as our heroic recapper, Brian Moylan, put it. Carrie Battan and I were sad to have the torch of our weekly chats snuffed out, but we know we’ll meet again, and sooner than when Carrie publishes her book about Survivor. At least we have that to look forward to.

Carrie, why was Jeff Probst’s live fuckup such a big deal?

Probst is a famous perfectionist who is like, I am master of my domain. I only require one take ever.

He’s never fucked up a live finale like this, and I’m sure he was so mad at whoever was producing the show and ordering the segments and stuff. Somebody got fired.

What was your favorite moment from the finale?

The surprise twist where they had their families visit the final three at camp. You see the boat coming, and then Joe looks at the boat and he goes, “Is that my tall-ass beautiful wife?” His wife is indeed a tall-ass woman, and I looked her up and she’s a former WNBA player. My respect for him went through the roof.

I thought it was fun that Mike White revealed that he cast two Survivor contestants in cameos on White Lotus season four and affirmed again that he wrote White Lotus season four while in post-contestant isolation. Someone should start a writing fellowship that you can apply for that just replicates the experience of being an eliminated Survivor contestant.

The Mike White honorary writing fellowship. Let’s speak this into existence.

What is the larger meaning of Aubry’s win?

The soft power of the highly articulate, overeducated person is still effective. She’s a liberal-arts girlie from Massachusetts with glasses. She’s proof that the pendulum has not fully swung the other way back to the strongman type of contestant.

Does the fact that I find Aubry fundamentally unlikable mean that I have to contend with my own internalized misogyny?

No, definitely you should never do that, but you should go back and watch her first season. I think you might come around on her a little bit.

THEATER

How Morgan Bassichis Summons a ‘Mean Gay Ghost’

The Can I Be Frank? performer works magic onstage.

Morgan Bassichis contains multitudes: They’re an actor, a Jewish Voice for Peace activist, a comedian, and the creator of Can I Be Frank?, which, E. Alex Jung writes, has mesmerized audiences in part by being as uncategorizable as Bassichis themself.

This month, Bassichis returns to the stage for the third run of their solo show, Can I Be Frank?, at Soho Playhouse. They put solo in air quotes because Bassichis restages routines by another performer, Frank Maya, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1995 on the cusp of a mainstream breakthrough. The show is a beautifully odd creature suspended between hagiography and send-up, oral history and music, self and other, past and present. It is as much séance as comedy routine, like summoning a mean gay ghost for guidance in the present. On the marking tape where the mic stand goes, Bassichis and the director, Sam Pinkleton, wrote FRANK. “The space between this person who’s living and this person who’s dead gets closer and closer until you don’t know if there’s a space at all,” says Pinkleton.

While a solo show is often a career launchpad for a performer, this one in particular serves as a reminder that all artists stand on the shoulders of their forebears: “Can I Be Frank? skewers the ego by suggesting that someone, sometime, did something similar and you’d be better off learning that history.”

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HEALTH

Can a Cocktail of Pepcid AC and Claritin Relieve Perimenopause Symptoms?

And even if it can’t, what’s the harm in trying?

This home-brewed remedy is going viral on Threads, Katie Heaney writes, for treating perimenopause and PMDD symptoms like fatigue, mood issues, and brain fog. Even though it’s not clinically tested or approved, the combo might make medical sense:

Zachary Rubin, an allergist and clinical immunologist, has seen patients who take antihistamines for these purposes for years. “Women will go to their doctors and say, ‘I take Allegra and Pepcid and my PMDD symptoms go away. It’s like magic. When you look at the literature, there are no clinical trials that actually validate and verify that information,” he says — however, he notes, that does not mean it’s not working for anyone, and there are plausible reasons for why it might work. “There are some studies that suggest that there is dysregulation of the chemical histamine during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, which also often corresponds with the symptoms that women report from PMDD,” Rubin says. Histamine also plays a role in the sleep-wake cycle, mood, digestion, and pain signaling, and many of these systems are dysregulated during hormonal changes. For these reasons, he adds, it “makes sense mechanistically” that these medications might provide relief for PMDD and perimenopause symptoms.

Doctors caution that you should explore other options, like HRT, before popping OTC pills you heard about from Threads, but they also acknowledge that so little research is being done in this space that women are being forced to “conduct clinical trials in their own living rooms.”

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• A great Jerry screed about the state of art.

• Fancy weddings in empty office-building real estate are having a moment.

• Laura Dern is a nepo we can get behind.

• Your lips need SPF, but most lip sunscreens taste like sunscreen. Not this one.

• Brad Lander is potentially poised to defeat Dan Goldman in a landslide.

• How do you get to Carnegie Hall? If you’re controversial biotech start-up founder Cathy Tie, you can just rent it out.

• The world’s foremost resource for information on Off Broadway plays.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

Our next TV show that we’ll all watch together is The Vampire Lestat, so catch up on Interview With the Vampire now.

PERFORMANCE ART

Send In the Clowns!

Allison P. Davis on how the L.A. clown scene is changing film and TV … for the better?!

If you have any friends who are aspiring actors, comedians, playwrights, directors, et cetera, you already know this: The whole world is newly down to clown. Allison went to L.A. to learn how, why, when, who, and where we’re headed with all this. She had a transcendent experience at Natalie Palamides’s show Weer that she likened to “doing the entirety of The Artist’s Way.” As to “why,” as one clown told Allison, “We have a king right now. And the fool has to rise in response.” I talked to Allison about all that plus, of course, the Connor Storrie of it all.

Allison, your piece made me feel happy that the spirit of that kind of avant-garde performance is alive and well and getting mainstream attention. My big question for you: Is mainstream attention going to kill the thing that makes clown so special?

Even if there’s mainstream attention, I don’t think clown can fully crack the mainstream. Clown’s pretty alienating for a lot of reasons. It’s special and weird. And this mainstream moment will probably have its ebb and flow, but they’ll keep doing what they’re doing. I took a friend to see the sex-robot clown show and she had a great time, but she was like, “I never need to do that again.”

But some aspects of clown will filter out into the mainstream. Has that already happened? How do you see that happening in the future?

I asked all the clowns, “Is this the new ladder to climb? You start doing clown, and you end up Connor Storrie?” And everyone who’d had a brush with Connor Storrie was like, “Oh, no, there is only one Connor. He is touched by the hand of God.” What John Gilkey, one of the teachers, said to me was, “I just hope that some of the ethos of clown will filter into the mainstream.” Maybe acting classes will adopt some clown and make better, more fearless performers, and people will get off the hamster wheel of Hollywood or improv and think about the world a little differently. Like, with Connor, maybe the things he learned in clown allowed him to be better at sex scenes and better at fully embodying a Russian fuckboy. Or you can think about how there’s clown on shows on HBO such as Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company. There are different clown characteristics that we are now able to spot in what we think of as mainstream content.

Should we take an Intro to Clown class?

I was going to go to one for this article! But the class got canceled and I didn’t have to go, so we’ll never know what I could have unlocked. I’ll never have found my clown, sadly, but we all know we have one inside of us.

THEATER

Two Anonymous Tonys Voters Dish!

The one thing they agree on: Lea Michele was robbed.

As is traditional, Vulture granted two Tonys voters anonymity and had them talk out their respective ballots. They’re both voting Schmigadoon over The Lost Boys, but they disagree about Jellicle Ball vs. Ragtime for Best Revival. The Ragtime love continues: They’re also loving Joshua Henry and Caissie Levy for Best Featured Actor and Actress, respectively. Both of the voters, however, thought Lea Michele should have been nominated for Chess. Perhaps even more controversial: One of the voters thinks Stephen Schwartz deserved a nod for The Queen of Versailles.

I didn’t care for The Queen of Versailles, and I understood why it didn’t get nominated, but not to give Stephen Schwartz a nomination for Best Score wasn’t cool when they gave it to two plays. It was a legitimate score for a new musical, which takes an extraordinary amount of work and craft from a legendary composer. They punished the wrong person by not nominating someone who has given his life to musical theater. The show was fucking awful. I found it offensive — it felt like a love letter to MAGA even though they claimed it wasn’t — but Stephen’s score was outstanding.

Well, we’ll all be tuning in on June 7 to see how this all plays out! And to see which numbers get performed and ideally to watch host P!nk hanging from the ceiling.

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PARENTING

Wanting the Third Kid You Know You Definitely Shouldn’t Have

Wow, this one hit close to home!

My friend (brag) Lydia Kiesling wrote an essay about how she once planned to have three kids, and then COVID happened and now, even though she’s very happy she stopped at the relatively large number of two, she still felt a kind of way when news circulated that Natalie Portman is pregnant at 44. All I can say is, Lydia, thank you for articulating this so well that I didn’t have to do the hard work of articulating it to myself!

My babies are now 11- and 8-year-old people, and I have moved into a parenting phase that has almost no bearing on the full-body fatigue and hypervigilance of parenting toddlers. My nervous system is in a completely different place than it was eight years ago, and when I see parents wrangling little ones in a grocery store or airport, I literally thank God that this is not me. But I can’t kick the envious pang I feel when I find out that women of my acquaintance (or Natalie Portman) are having a third child. I’ve started to let myself poke at this feeling with cautious curiosity. Why, exactly, do I still care?

The toxic brew of too-relatable emotions described here includes: class rage, rage at living in a country that doesn’t value women’s and children’s lives, and a yearning for what Lydia describes as “that big explosion of Technicolor feeling that came with a new baby,” which she is right to note can also be accessed via drugs. Ultimately, while a third child may be the ultimate status symbol for families in gentrified Brooklyn, I guess when all is said and done, I’d rather “own my own home.” Which I also can’t afford, lol.

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• The Old Navy women’s overalls Rob Rausch can’t live without.

• Ten dark stories from Hayden Panettiere’s memoir. Mamas, don’t let your babies become child actors.

• They invented a G train that runs on the weekend, and it’s a bus sponsored by a skin-care brand.

• All the potential ways to talk your landlord out of a rent hike.

• Everything you ever wanted to know about mineral sunscreens.

• “What’s left for Lownie’s third edition? Freak-offs at the Beirut Hilton with Bashar al-Assad?” Tina Brown, ladies and gentlemen.

• Molly Young smells amazing, wants to eat surf wax.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

“Touched by the hand of God,” and yet still somehow not yet touched by the hand of [TRAIN ONCE AGAIN GOES BY].

FILM

Rachel Handler Is Our Man in Cannes

Piping hot dish, served live from a line for a screening in the French Riviera.

Yesterday, Rachel Handler went to a fancy Cannes-adjacent gala where a woman accidentally ate her dinner and then Sharon Stone got up onstage and delivered a speech that seemed better suited to a Landmark Forum–type self-help seminar, but everyone was pretty into it. Today, I snagged her for a few minutes as she headed to a screening of Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, which was later evacuated because someone had a medical emergency! As Rachel explains, the vibes in Cannes are decidedly weird this year.

Rachel, what is the Better World Fund Gala?

The event is theoretically for a “foundation,” but it has nefarious energy (they honored Kevin Spacey last year), and I am not actually sure what they do, and the crowd seems mainly composed of Russian oligarchs and people who are dodging extradition.

What are the vibes like in Cannes more generally? What are people gossipping about, reporter to reporter?

The vibes are really off this year, in part because there are no big Hollywood movies and it is an obvious hole in the lineup, and in part because there haven’t been many great movies! Nothing is really hugely breaking through so far in competition — though Paper Tiger was great and I liked Fjord a lot. Some of the movies with the most buzz are not in competition, like Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (my fave so far) and Club Kid. It’s a really strange year. It feels a lot more sedate than usual.

Why are there no big Hollywood movies?

The festival director, Thierry Frémaux, said it was because Hollywood has been more “quiet” after COVID and writers’ strikes.

But also maybe the waning of America’s cultural hegemony?

Yeah, and the consolidation and destruction of Hollywood. On the bright side, though: two gay, buzzy movies!

I have to be careful that I don’t get overly enthusiastic about stuff just because it’s gay. My best friend quoted the Broad City line “Sometimes you’re so anti-racist that you’re actually really racist” to me yesterday, and that was sobering.

Even taking off my gay goggles, they’re good. And Camp Miasma is really good. It is a gay Cannes, for sure. At least two movies about older/younger women affairs (A Woman’s Life and Camp Miasma) and possibly more, who’s to say. The gay agenda is alive and well here. The other theme is AI, the opposite of gay.

Have you seen anyone extraordinarily hot in person (besides Cate Blanchett)?

Hannah Einbinder? Quite hot in person. Diego Calva. Gillian Anderson. And Andy Garcia, who I interviewed. He’s got a vibe for sure. He’s Fernando! I asked him three questions about Mamma Mia 2. I really pushed it, considering he’s here to talk about the film he directed.

Mamma Mia 2 is the most important film of all time, so that’s appropriate.

I’ll be hosting a screening of it June 7 in Brooklyn with THNK1994. It’s my favorite film.

DAD NEWS

Unfortunately, Bruce Springsteen and Chris Christie Are Pals

Across party lines, two Garden State guys forged a bond.

Those of us who texted our dads when Bruce Springsteen hilariously appeared to snub disgraced former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have had to text our dads to issue a correction: The Boss and Christie are, in fact, friends, per Springsteen’s manager.

An entire news cycle followed about the alleged snub, and it’s now become enough of a “thing” that Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, gave a comment to Rolling Stone about it. The short version: These two gentlemen are good friends despite their respective political history. But to enhance your reading experience, visualize Landau as Jeremy Strong and his tinted frames in Deliver Me From Nowhere. “Current stories claiming a break in the friendship between Bruce and Chris Christie are absurd,” he said. “We’ve all been friends for years, Chris was attending his 180th show, standing at the side of the stage as our guest. And we hope to see him at our next 180 shows, as our guest. Period.”

Sorry, Dad! I’ll strive to only bring you accurate news in the future.

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BOOKS

A Best Seller Takes on the Tradwife But Misses

Sarah Jones reckons with Yesteryear.

Many shows, movies, and books have attempted to satirize the figure of the tradwife (including, recently, Elsbeth! Starring Anna Camp. She was funny, at least.) But no one’s really nailing it.

Without a psychology to map, the tradwife is challenging to examine. One of the buzziest renderings can be found in Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke’s best-selling novel about Natalie, a contrarian who broadcasts her quaint farm life and growing family to millions of followers on social media. Then, horror of horrors, she travels back in time to the 19th century and struggles for survival in the Idaho backcountry. There is a twist, which is visible from the reaches of space by the time it arrives. This is not Outlander; Natalie has simply gone mad. The tradwife gets her comeuppance while Good Morning America gets a book-club pick.

Welp, guess we don’t have to read that book!

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• The Look Book goes to Frieze and runs into the Divine Miss M.

• Wanted: a very wealthy donor, or petrostate, to solve the Met Opera’s fiscal crisis.

• Billionaire Chris Larsen has turned San Francisco into a surveillance state.

• John Lithgow gets his NYQ measured.

• There’s a looming global aluminum can shortage?! (Third item)

• Crossword.

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The ASMEs are tonight, and to me, it would be funny if Anne Hathaway showed up in character as Andy Sachs.

THEATER

John Lithgow and the Whole Separating the Art From the Artist Thing

A profile that gets at some of the thorniest issues of our time.

This issue’s cover story is a profile by Rebecca Alter of the versatile and masterful actor John Lithgow, who’s currently nominated for a Tony for playing Roald Dahl in Giant. The play encompasses the British children’s author’s pro-Palestinian views as well as his virulent antisemitism. As Rebeca writes, Giant is evoking strong audience reactions: “A friend told me that when he went to see it, a woman in the audience kept going ‘Woo!’ whenever [Aya Cash’s character] Jessie brought up Israel’s right to defend itself. Cash confirmed that those lines occasionally get mid-scene applause and whoops and that Dahl’s pro-Palestine lines sometimes receive applause as well.” Rebecca also spoke to Lithgow about his decision to play Dumbledore in the forthcoming Harry Potter HBO series. She’s very brave! We talked about it.

What do you make of Aya Cash’s claim that the cast doesn’t talk about politics?

I thought that was interesting, but I also know that John and Elliot Levey [who plays Dahl’s publisher] had also told me that they definitely talk at least a bit about politics. It may just be that while I’m sure there’s some productions in New York City where the cast and crew have a circle and have a talking stick and talk about what’s happening in the news, that is very much not this show’s process. That’s the impression I got from the playwright, Mark Rosenblatt. This was a play that was already in development prior to October 7, and it’s set in 1983, and that’s what it’s about.

Were you impressed with John’s candor?

The fact that he volunteered to say that the show resonates with the news today because Israel has, much like in 1982, bombed civilian infrastructure like hospitals is more than I think a lot of actors on Broadway in 2026 would say.

Was it difficult for you to bring up J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans activism with our next Dumbledore?

I opened it up with John by being like, We’ve hit this part of the conversation where inevitably this is something we’re gonna talk about. He has resigned himself to having clearly not known about any of this beforehand. I need to say that he is so, so extremely smart and well-read, but he is also 80, so he wasn’t in the weeds of Twitter discourse beforehand. And he falls on the side of Harry Potter books have done a lot of good for millions of kids, and it’s nice to keep that going and to be a part of it.

BOOKS

Catch East of Eden Fever Now

John Steinbeck’s 650-pager is the trendy classic you’ll see at the beach this summer.

Move over, Stoner. Make way, Lonesome Dove. The next book to fit into the Venn diagram overlap between “was on the syllabus, but you never read it” and “suddenly everywhere” will be East of Eden, Fran Hoepfner claims:

The obvious reason: Zoe Kazan’s adaptation of East of Eden will be out on Netflix this fall, and it would be the perfect thing to be pedantic about for months on end with your friends and loved ones at dinner. Steinbeck’s epic is widely considered his best novel, and at around 650 pages, it’s a modest tome without being a nightmare to tote to the Rockaways. It tells the story of two families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks, and it is based on and inspired by both Steinbeck’s maternal grandfather and the Bible. East of Eden also features Cathy — 2026’s second evil-ish Cathy — who is played by Florence Pugh in the miniseries and has some of the novel’s best scenes and lines. 2026: The year every woman wanted to be Cathy, and no, not that one. For what it’s worth, BookTok is already going nuts for East of Eden. Should its taste be trusted? Not always, but it’s right about The Secret History, and it’s right about Steinbeck too.

The Grapes of Wrath will also soon get a miniseries adaptation as part of an AMC anthology series that’s giving “erudite Ryan Murphy” vibes. That’s all the evidence we need to confidently predict a hot Steinbeck summer. The East of Eden adaptation, it should be noted, also stars Mike Faist, whose mere onscreen presence is enough to make me [TRAIN GOES BY] [CAR HORN BLARES]. Anyway, here’s the trailer.

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MUSIC

Dara Won Eurovision With ‘Bangaranga’

Bulgaria takes home an unfortunately meaningless prize this year.

The geopolitical controversy swirling around this year’s Eurovision song contest is probably more interesting than the contest results, but this newsletter is not wading into a debate about whether the whole enterprise is invalidated by many heavyweight contenders like Ireland and Spain refusing to participate because Israel was included. (FWIW, I think it is invalidated, but also, I like songs, so here we are.) Our fave Greece did not win or even come close. “Bangaranga” by Dara sounds exactly like a Girls5eva parody of a The Fame Monster–era Lady Gaga track. That is a compliment.

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• Alison Willmore called it right: A24 will distribute Jordan Firstman’s Cannes hit Club Kid.

• How costume designer Shirley Kurata made I Love Boosters the best fashion movie of the year.

• Odo East Village is a playful à la carte version of its uber-fancy uptown sibling.

• Hey, my millennials: Want to feel old and jaded? Shein is buying Everlane; more details to come.

• Neil Gaiman is suing one of his accusers for violating the terms of an NDA, which, per her lawyer, indicates that “he may have come to the conclusion he has nothing left to lose.”

• This week’s NYC weather forecast means it’s time to stick your window AC units in. Here are the best new ones.

• Final approval of the Anthropic settlement may come next week. I’ll believe it when the check is in my hot little hands.

• “Apple already employs a T9-esque suggested words feature in iMessage, even converting abbreviations into full sentences. The AI was a hat on a hat.”

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

The Gilded Age shot a big outdoor scene right outside our office, but tragically, it was the weekend so we didn’t get to gawk.