Rebecca

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Someone should 100% write a TV series about Neil Sedaka, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow & Carole King growing up at the same neighborhood in Brooklyn

I will listen to this. Does the series mention the 2015 documentary The Brainwashing of my Dad by Jen Senko?

SkiMo is another fun one.

So wild being able to see them pulling the strings to pilot the sled. Super cool race.

Freeski and monobob are my two new favorite competitions at the Olympics… and they’re fun to say.

This Superbowl feels like both teams know the winner gets invited to the White House.

I could go for some fudgy brownies right now.

So happy the Grammys thought it was the album of the year too 😊.

Ms. Lauryn Hill sounded and looked amazing then the hair on my arms stood up. Loved that whole tribute.

5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sondheim

There are 14 great choices in this favorite-Sondheim-song roundup, and together, they still represent just a tiny fraction of his brilliance. Come for the wonderful picks; stay for the guy in comments insisting that he's a "fraud" and that musicals died 60 years ago. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/a...

I am incensed that your husband had this experience and also wildly intrigued to discover that one of the greatest playwrights is an impressive needlepoint artist. I would like to see more of his needlework.

I do too and yesterday I felt doubly attacked when I realized I accidentally bought a leather bound planner online for the year 2025.

Doth he still rage?

[Exit Bigot.]

January 6 was like a much dumber version of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch and yet a plurality of American voters were like, Yeah, let’s give that guy the nuke codes again. An absolutely world historical debacle of societal ignorance. I’ll never understand it.

Love this. I would love a Patti LaBelle appearance with her prune cobbler too.

THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I'm not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn't care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There's nothing he would die for - not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young

son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He's not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, "the common man"" veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn't care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he's not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn't - in a more secular key - even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel's hand. Doesn't even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn't live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he's

very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

this is one of the most psychotic things Trump has ever posted

The Hit Hollywood Didn’t Want - The American Prospect Ryan Coogler’s bloodsucker blockbuster is all about Black creative freedom. No wonder the industry saw it as a threat.

What a great piece! This just gets better and better as you read.

prospect.org/2025/12/11/s...

Hamnet’s Ending Manages to Pack a Surprise Into One of the World’s Most Familiar Stories The Oscar favorite’s final scene may make you rethink your understanding of Hamlet.

I wrote about Hamnet, Hamlet, and setting fresh eyes on the most-scrutinized work in the English language

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

I chortled at North American Cankle Champ.

You will be visited by three spirits

I look forward to a time in the future when I won’t constantly be muttering, “Jesus, he’s such a fucking idiot”

Samesies! 🩷

Kermit the Frog Learns to Love Jazz Through “Visual Thinking” (1959) Jim Henson launched his first televised puppet program, Sam and Friends, when he was a freshman at the University of Maryland. The show ran for six years on NBC affiliate WRC-TV in Washington, DC.

Kermit the Frog Learns to Love Jazz Through “Visual Thinking” (1959)

What a long and weird year but I’m most happy that Bad Bunny’s album was released on Jan 5, 2025 and has remained my favorite album of the year all year.

‘Tom Stoppard redefined Britishness as something freedom-loving' | The Observer Get full access to the app & website:

‘Tom and I were friends for over 50 years. We relished each other’s plays, and we loved each other’s company’

David Hare remembers Tom Stoppard

https://bit.ly/4rur4s9