POP GIRLIES

Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Drop Dead’ Has Killed Us

In a good way!

Zach Schiffman has been getting us hyped for this moment for a while, and last night at midnight Olivia’s new single finally dropped, accompanied by a video directed by Sofia Coppola. When I say “video directed by Sofia Coppola,” you’re probably thinking, Oh, is the whole thing shots of Olivia running gaily through Versailles in Chloé bloomers? Well, yes, you guessed correctly. More important, the song itself is … so good?!?! I loved it instantly, and how often does that happen? The lyric “One night I was bored in bed and stalked you on the internet” is timeless, deathless memebait poetry. Zach says people will complain Livvie is reheating Taylor’s nachos — the lyric “went home and tried to stalk you on the internet” is from “Paper Rings,” specifically — but to them we say, “Whatever!” The experience of stalking a crush on the internet is eternal and universal.

The other intriguing lyric in “drop dead” is “Pisces and a Gemini / But I think we might go really nice together.” Oh, Olivia. Well, clearly she and Louis Partridge could not overcome their astrological incompatibility, which is considerable. I’d recommend that she date a grounding Taurus or a no-nonsense Capricorn. However, she seems to be spending time with Cameron Winter, a fellow Pisces. That’s a lot of weepy, dreamy, creative, addiction-prone energy for one relationship, but I’m hoping those two kids will make it work, or at least get some good songs out of it.

TELEVISION

Doing Karaoke With The Pitt’s Isa Briones

Her song choice is flawless, as is her portrayal of Trinity Santos.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are Jackson McHenry, and you’re at Sing Sing with TV and Broadway star Isa Briones, who famously sang “You Oughta Know” in last night’s finale of The Pitt. You’re up first at the mic, and you know that the skill and intensity of your own performance is going to determine whether Briones herself will fully commit. Your song choice? “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia. Jackson, you are truly one of God’s strongest soldiers. I really wish I could have been there for this, but Jackson’s description of what Briones did next will have to suffice:

The party trick is that she’s taught herself to sing “The Winner Takes It All” with all the same mannerisms as Meryl Streep in the film version of Mamma Mia! “I can do the whole performance, beat by beat,” she says. We cue up the song. The synthesizer riff starts to clink. “Imagine Pierce Brosnan is following me,” Briones says, before shifting into Streep’s liquid vowels and aquiline posture. It’s a studied impersonation, down to the way she keeps fiddling with an imaginary scarf — in an instrumental section, she pretends to run along a Greek coastline with it. “That’s the performance of a generation,” Briones says afterward. “Every time she goes, ‘I don’t wanna to talk,’ that shit is amazing.”

What song would you have tried to impress Briones? I would have either done “Who Will Save Your Soul” or “Because the Night.”

TWITTER

‘The Pope Is Soft on Crime’

Becca Schuh on what you missed this week if you are, wisely, not on Twitter.

Remember Monday? I barely do. Way back then was when we first learned about a new meme format that is frankly rude (as a person of 1991 birth).

Feud season three: Trump vs. the pope.

I have no qualms with this direction for Nicole Kidman. I think it’s interesting and fun. Okay, fun might not be the right word.

TBH, I’ll try the Upper West Side Goop, who cares.

Incredible news for insufferable people (myself included).

A Joe Biden gaffe, harkening back to simpler times.

Click Your Way Out

• Multi-hyphenate star Julio Torres opened his sketchbooks.

• Too good for this world: Hampshire College is no more.

• The food that powers Ci Siamo chef Hillary Sterling through her busy days.

• Natalie Portman is living my personal nightmare of being pregnant with her third child at 44 (good for her, though).

• Audrey Gelman spent four hours trapped in the fever dream that is the House on the Rock.

• Tracie Morrissey is blogging again, praise the dark Lord.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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If you’re a fan of I Who Have Never Known Men, or misandry in general, don’t miss tomorrow’s NYPL event.

TELEVISION

Which Survivor 50 Contestants Are MAGA?

And which one is a leftist sex-work advocate?

For reasons best known to her alone, Carrie Battan has a Ph.D. in Survivor. I don’t know anything about the show, but I’m watching regardless. Each week, she schools me on the subtext I’m missing. Here’s our full recap.

While to me, an ignorant person, this seemed like a boring episode, I suspect I’m missing a lot. Fill me in!

Okay, so historically Survivor is about bringing together all walks of life, from all over America, different types of people. Obviously that means that they bring people on who have political differences. And yet it’s the elephant in the room because if anybody talks about politics at camp, that doesn’t make it into the episode because that could alienate viewers. So Survivor is presented as this completely apolitical thing even though there are all these rumors swirling around that, before the season started, a MAGA alliance among the cast formed on Zoom. It’s Stephanie, the super-athletic late-40s woman; Chrissy, a registered Republican voter who lives in the villages in Florida; Coach, who got voted off last night; Jonathan, the big guy; and Colby. Then you have these brown and Black players and these young Ivy League types. The battle lines are being drawn, but nobody can say explicitly, “Okay, you guys stand for everything Trump supports and we don’t.” The show has to pretend that people are voting purely on the basis of strategy and gameplay. But there’s all of this bubbling beneath the surface.

Are any of the contestants leftists? It’s hard to imagine a leftist Survivor contestant; the game seems inherently conservative.

Ozzy Lusth was protesting the Iraq War when he was 20; he’s pro-Palestine. He had an OnlyFans during the pandemic. He’s one of the most woke players who’s ever been on Survivor.

Wow, that’s amazing! Oh, he’s open to MMF threesomes. Good to know. I thought Cirie was the hero of last night’s episode. The moment she had on the beach, crying because she couldn’t find the coconut, was very genuine and relatable to me.

It’s a good thing she found that coconut, because she was then able to orchestrate the ouster of Coach and Chrissy. She was all but saying, “If we don’t get this pair out, they have a very clear path to the end.” Cirie was doing damage control for CBS — and for the broader Survivor fan community — by being like, “Let’s not have a MAGA winner.”

HEALTH

The Agony and Ecstasy of a 6-Year Running Streak

Hannah Pittard knows she’s being nuts, but she’s still running every day.

Peek into the brain of someone who has gone for a run every day since 2020, through flu, COVID, grief, and even, once, a tornado. There are a lot of reasons, both good and bad, why Pittard can’t give up her habit.

I don’t know how this ends. I suspect it won’t be dramatic, but it will be sad. It won’t be a banner day or a triumphant declaration. It will likely be ordinary: a day that gets away from me, minute by minute, just as in my dreams. My family has pointed this out, as though I should be relieved: “At least you won’t have to decide.” They mean it kindly. What they’re really saying is “We’re waiting for something to rescue you from yourself.” When I try to imagine that day — the actual day — I feel the particular grief of something being taken rather than released. And I can’t decide if the fact that I can’t choose to stop means I’m still sick, or just human, or both.

I love this woman’s commitment to doing the most, and if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right!

AUGHTS POP

The Lyric ‘Drops of Jupiter’ Came to Pat Monahan in a Dream

And now it’s going to be stuck in your head.

If the Train song “Drops of Jupiter” was a person, it now would legally be able to rent a car. Still, I challenge you not to come hear it in the wild sometime in the next few days, playing in a CVS or an Uber. What makes this somewhat weird and even cringe song also a bit timeless and compelling?

At the time we had recorded an album that was called Something More, and the president at the time was like, “You don’t have a first single,” something that had to be a hit and get you excited. We didn’t have any of those, and my mother had passed away and so I was not in a good place to write the thing that they were looking for. I worked for three months and one night I fell asleep and woke up with this dream, “Now that she’s back in the atmosphere.” And it was my mother basically saying, “You don’t have to worry about me. Like, go do your thing. I can swim through the planets and come back here with drops of Jupiter in my hair if I want.” And then I turned that into a love story and it took 15 minutes.

Treat yourself to a listen today and be whisked away to a simpler time, when the idea of “the best soy latte that you’ve ever had” could captivate the world.

Click Your Way Out

• The 259 things New Yorkers should know, from Tina Brown’s dry cleaner to Gabrielle Hamilton’s exterminator.

• Dan Levy on how he creates memorable TV mothers.

• Just say “no” to the Gen-Z shoe of the summer: Rainbow flip-flops.

• The new trash cans are already breaking.

• How to have a spring break with kids that’s not an expensive bad time.

• Why Anna Dorn is still obsessed with Lana Del Rey.

• Crossword.

• Telematrix.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Yes, “Drops of Jupiter” has been performed on Glee.

POP GIRLIES

Olivia Rodrigo Probably Isn’t Secretly Gay

Zach Schiffman’s got the latest on Livvy, Sabrina, and, possibly, Taylor.

The moment adults clinging to their adolescence have been waiting for is almost here: Olivia Rodrigo’s first single since 2024, “drop dead,” drops this Friday. On Instagram and TikTok, the sound, which her team surely is praying will trend far and wide, has been dubbed “drop unalive 🤪” (emoji included). Gen-Z pop stars, they’re not just like us! The song seems to be about her recent ex-boyfriend, British actor Louis Partridge. Her first tease of the synth-rock-sounding song includes the lyric “I hope you never finish that beer” set to footage of a couple of pints of Guinness, likely a nod to the Netflix series that absolutely no one watched starring Partridge, House of Guinness.

Fans have quickly moved on, though, guessing that Olivia Rodrigo is the next secretly gay pop star (Gaylivia rumors have been around for a while, admittedly) and is currently dating Tony nominee (and should-be winner, IMO) Sadie Sink. Olivia’s recent Instagram dump starts a post of her holding a bouquet of flowers in the Los Angeles hills, and fans have theorized that it twas taken outside of Sink’s home. But I have firsthand knowledge that Sink currently lives in Park Slope. (I see her walking around there constantly, and she has even been spotted — by me — in the Flatbush Avenue Crunch Fitness.) That gay rumor is, unfortunately, unalive for now. Plus Olivia was spotted getting dinner last night with Cameron Winter.

Meanwhile, in main-pop-girl land, Sabrina Carpenter’s lavish Coachella-headlining set was briefly overshadowed by her misunderstanding of the zaghrouta, an Arabic call, as a yodel. False controversy! Moving on! People online tried to accuse her of being MAGA, like fellow busty blonde Sydney Sweeney, but why would she have comrade Susan Sarandon play Sabrina’s older self for seven minutes during the set if she were secretly a Republican? Get some media literacy, pop people! Seemingly, the Susanalogue will stay this coming weekend, but there’s another surprise coming to Carpenter’s performance, as the official Coachella schedule has added ten minutes to the headline act. Perhaps it’s ten minutes for a fellow blonde to perform her own ten-minute-long song? Rumors that Carpenter was sound-checking the title track “The Life of a Showgirl” were never verified, but I wouldn’t count out a drop-in from someone witty and pretty named Kitty. Legitly.

ACTORS

Riz Ahmed’s Favorite Music, Clothes, and Scene From Hamlet

He’s a hypebeast, a dad, and an Oscar winner — the complete package.

There’s something for everyone in Riz Ahmed’s “Taste Test” interview: recommendations for the places he likes to buy Japanese vintage and Scandinavian army jackets, his favorite “crunchy, sultry” R&B, the book his novelist wife is always trying to get him to read (Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead: hard to argue with that). But there’s also the actor stuff – he’s starring in a new production of Hamlet, a play that’s so hot right now. His favorite scene is a really juicy one.

The scene that I performed back at drama school that I think is a really interesting scene … the “Get thee to a nunnery” scene with Ophelia, where he is basically telling her to leave him alone and break up with him, but also kind of being really horrible and mean and saying ugly things. There’s a lot of different possibilities as to what’s going on. Is he actually being overtly just mean and toxic, or is he publicly staging a breakup to try to create distance between them because he knows that they’re being spied on? Is he almost protecting her? It has that mix of rage and vulnerability — it’s performative, but also there’s something very personal spilling out in an uncomfortable way.

I’ve always liked the “publicly staging a breakup to protect her” interpretation because I’m a bit of a romantic.

FASHION

Shop Susan Alexandra Founder Susan Korn’s Closet!

All the beading and fruit and whimsy you’d expect, for low prices.

I am loving the Strategist “Classifieds,” especially these closet drops, but sometimes the prices are a little on the high side. Susan Korn is being more realistic, and you should take advantage. A custom-made dog outfit for a mere $18? $25 pointy white slingbacks? A portrait of a woman that Susan painted, then realized looks too much like her therapist, and is now selling for $35? What’s stopping you? Especially if you wear shoe size 8.5 to 9.5, there’s lots to admire here.

Click Your Way Out

• Aww, the people working on The Pitt brought their pets to work.

• Supriya Ganesh’s gender journey.

• An internet hero known to us only as @buzzkillary is vindicated.

• “My mediocre employee thinks she’s not getting promoted bc Sexism.”

• A steep discount on a modern, minimalist (kind of hideous) townhouse.

• I’m sorry but if I had to know about this, you do too. (I’m not sorry.)

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Julia Wertz! Me! Books Are Magic! Tonight!

POP

Niall Horan’s New Album Is Also Called Dinner Party!

Why not chat with him about it?

Because One Direction was younger millennials’ Heated Rivalry, I know plenty of people to whom Niall Horan is very, very important. So when the opportunity arose to interview him about his catchy new single, “Dinner Party,” off the forthcoming album of the same name, who was I to say “no”? The song itself is a laid-back, California-feeling up-tempo ballad about meeting a new love at, you guessed it, a dinner party. On a recent Zoom, Niall ran his hands through his hair adorably while telling me what it’s like to dine at his house.

Let’s imagine you’re hosting a dinner party. I hear you love eating and drinking. What are you serving?

When I was growing up, it was a very meat-and-potatoes upbringing, like literally every day. Spaghetti Bolognese was like, Wow, we’re being adventurous tonight. You know, pasta sauce from a jar. I moved to London when I was 16, and I was trying all these different cuisines and then obviously traveling the world broadened my palate for the better. I love, love, love Japanese food.

And to drink?

If I’m doing a barbecue at home, it’d be a cocktail. I love gin-and-tonics. I love an Aperol spritz. We obviously have the Wimbledon tennis tournament, and in the summer, Pimm’s is a big thing.

Ew, a Pimm’s cup is gross, too much like a salad.

I’m not a huge Pimm’s fan, but for those few weeks when Wimbledon is on, every bar is selling it in these big jugs, and you just do it because it’s happening around you. You jump on the bandwagon for those few weeks and then never drink Pimm’s for the rest of the year.

What do you find are some fail-safe dinner-party conversation topics?

It depends on the group around the table. Friends of mine are doing very different jobs, so you can lean into that and ask what they’ve got going on in their lives. I don’t really hang out with people in my industry. For the most part, everyone I hang out with has got completely nine-to-five jobs. I moved into a new house, so the house is always a talking point as well; people want to have a look around. Politics always creeps in, especially in this day and age, but I usually try to keep it light around the music we’re playing.

Would you play “Dinner Party” at a dinner party?

When I think of songs like “Dinner Party,” I think of the countryside in England, beautiful rolling hills, and sunsets in the evening in the middle of June.

FILM

The Best Part of The Drama Is Its Soundtrack

All credit to the film’s music supervisor.

Cat Zhang got obsessed with the Robert Pattinson–Zendaya A24 movie with the twist that’s creeping some people out, but not for the reason you’d think: She was immediately smitten with the film’s music. Per Cat, it’s “a treasure chest of deep cuts — Scottish funk-pop, Norwegian trip-hop, German underground folk.” If that sounds like something you’d like (and honestly, who doesn’t love Scottish funk-pop?), Cat and Jack Denton made a Spotify playlist of songs from The Drama and songs like the songs from The Drama. Listening to it, I find this is a perfect playlist to throw on when you’re having friends over for a … dinner party. “You have such brilliant taste! I’ve never heard this song before, but I feel like I’ve known it all my life,” your appreciative guests will say, though perhaps not Niall Horan. You could also play this album in your tiny chic independent boutique that smells like palo santo. You could even play it in bed, maybe, if that’s the vibe. Though not everyone wants to get it on to Judee Sill.

BROADWAY

The Best Part of Dog Day Afternoon Is Its Soundtrack

The new stage adaptation of the 1975 heist movie has killer tunes.

“We started to build a palette months ahead of being in the theater to keep that gritty ’70s New York feel,” Dog Day sound designer Cody Spencer told Devon Ivie. “I paid attention to what was being played on the mainstream and college radio at the time. What were people hearing in Brooklyn in 1975?” The answer: David Bowie, Marvin Gaye. The play itself is getting mixed reviews, but one thing everyone agrees on is that the music is great.

One of the things I love about reading Devon is that she’ll casually drop this kind of tidbit: “The Edge,” one of the most sampled songs in hip-hop that was composed by the man who played Ducky on NCIS.” (In case you don’t immediately know what she’s talking about, it’s the instrumental part that precedes “dadadada … it’s the muthafuckin’ D.O.G.” in “The Next Episode,” for one.) Don’t you love knowing stuff like that? I do.

Click Your Way Out

• Famesick, by Lena Dunham, is out today. Here’s a review and a rundown of some gossip about the book’s boldface names.

• The definitive guide to preventing and treating head lice.

• Nicole Kidman and Chloé Zhao are training to be death doulas.

• Great news! Taxwise, it has never been a better time to own a private jet.

• A cautionary tale about existing online from our inimitable Tammie Teclemariam.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Tomorrow’s high is 82, so I hope today at work you planted the seeds of the fake illness you’re “coming down with.”

FIRST PERSON

Why Rainbow Rowell Hasn’t Gone on GLP-1’s … Yet

Not experiencing hunger is destabilizing and strange.

Novelist Rainbow Rowell specializes in yearning. “My characters tend to want something so badly it makes their stomachs hurt, and I’m good at sustaining that stomachache-y feeling for 200 pages,” she writes. It’s that feeling, and that part of her identity, that she worries she would lose if she went on the now-ubiquitous weight-loss drugs.

Every night I go to bed looking forward to breakfast — genuinely excited about breakfast. “If I go to sleep now, it’ll be here immediately.” After breakfast, I’ll have an iced coffee. I love an iced coffee — nothing’s better than an iced coffee. Then I get to have lunch. Love lunch. Then my family will come home, and we’ll have dinner. Maybe we’ll go out. Dinner’s a party, I love dinner, and I get to have it every day. What a world, what a life. I am excited to eat all day, every day. I love being hungry.

I think I would have started a GLP-1 by now if I thought it would affect only my body. What I’m worried about is my brain. It’s the yearning I want to hold onto. The desire and delight.

I feel compelled to say here that none of my friends or family have experienced anhedonia as a result of weight-loss drugs. I also feel compelled to say that before these drugs came along, I didn’t know that the word anhedonia existed.

I’m worried that if I take the drugs, I’ll change, and I won’t even realize it. I’m also worried that I’ll take the drugs and change, and I will realize it, but I’ll love being skinny so much that I won’t care.

I’m merely a “small fat” (remember the terminology of body positivity? I barely do), but I felt exactly the same way as Rowell does about the quest to be thin at the cost of not really experiencing hunger or desire in the same way during my abortive three-month Mounjaro journey, which I touched on here. I also experienced side effects that I can only liken to … so you know how sometimes if you smoke weed you experience “dry mouth”? Now imagine that happening to, like, your entire lower intestine. TMI?

SKIN DEEP

Beauty and Wellness, Taken to a Dystopian Extreme!

What is really going on with the people obsessed with peptides and lasers?

If you read Lily Sperry’s Substack, Health Gossip, where people share their baroque and idiosyncratic beauty/wellness routines, or if you had a reaction to the Substack post where Laura Reilly shared her pricey and seemingly endless litany of personal upkeep routines and products, have I got an article for you! Novelist Zoe Dubno explores how we got here and why it is that so many people are stacking peptides and injecting themselves with whatnot in order to look, in her words, “marginally better.”

Sperry told me that the morning we spoke, she “stood on her vibration plate, which activates lymphatic drainage, with her red light on and some Gregorian chants playing.” When I asked her why she engages with these practices, she said, “I think it stems from a desire for control. And, you know, in our current global climate, it’s just very chaotic. So to return to the body and to ourselves as a site of control is comforting for some people.”

This was a common theme among the women I spoke to. “We all have our little rituals of control that make us feel better,” a 31-year-old woman working on a doctorate in clinical psychology told me about the Botox she’s been getting since she was 25 and worked as a case manager in Brooklyn. “For a year in my early 20s, I was also spending literally all of my money on a psycho 100-step skin-care process. Looking back, I didn’t have the executive functioning to be successfully anorexic, which is what I also wanted. But I did have the discipline to enjoy this complicated multistep ritual of the skin care. I found it satisfying.”

I don’t have the executive function, time, or money for any of this shit, but that’s not to say that I’m low maintenance (at all. I’m a Libra) and I feel compelled to share with you that getting a lash-lift and tint every three months is the best investment in my looks I’ve ever made, because you always look like you’re wearing perfectly applied subtle mascara and it only costs $100. The only downside is that you have to keep your eyes closed for an hour and it feels extremely claustrophobic. But as we have learned time and again — and as I tell my 7-year-old child as they squirm in the pedicure chair — beauty is pain.

MOVIES

Prepare for the Film Forum Terry Zwigoff Festival!

Adriane Quinlan interviews the revered director of Ghost World and Bad Santa.

Terry Zwigoff is obsessed with the kind of material that Hollywood hates: rare, old blues records; sexually explicit adult comics. Improbably, these interests pulled him to make documentaries (Crumb, Louie Bluie). What’s even weirder is how he somehow pivoted to adapting Daniel Clowes comics into films, then making Bad Santa. Film Forum is showing his oeuvre from April 17–23.

Ghost World (2001) shows America as the hellscape we now know and love. Tell me about cranking up the absurdity, like with fake ads for an oil company and cheesy restaurants.

In preproduction, I spent a day taking the cinematographer, producer, production designer, wardrobe, and other department heads to a nearby shopping mall. I pointed out things I found absurd or ridiculous or “off” in some way — like glum, obese people walking around in colorful jogging outfits, holding giant-size cups of soda, mindlessly pushing carts full of plastic junk through the piped-in Muzak. Everything was so colorful and cheery on the surface but had a more nightmarish underside. That probably came out of some instinct that started to seep into my consciousness from being an avid reader of the early Harvey Kurtzman Mad magazines in the early ’50s, and wanting to help the audience connect to my own way of seeing the world, while layering the film with details so it holds up on subsequent viewings.

I could watch the art-school scenes dozens of times. They’re perfect. What was the thinking behind Mirror, Father, Mirror?

There was a guy I knew from years ago who used to always show his short 16-mm. films around San Francisco in the ’70s. I’d suffered through dozens of them over the years. He knew a lot of the same underground-comics crowd I knew and would always show his latest effrort at parties. I couldn’t find him, but I wanted to. I thought it would be better to get an actual amateur experimental filmmaker to do it. A cinematographer I knew had a young gal as an apprentice, so I asked her to do it. I told her to not try and be funny. We gave her a camera, and this is pretty much what she did. I think it was silent, and we added the sound or some of the sound.

Robert Crumb also came out of your 1970s San Francisco scene. You were friends first. When was the last time you guys talked and about what?

I talked to him last week, just checking in to see how he’s doing. He said, “Good,” said his little, beautiful French village is still rather untouched by the hell going on around the rest of the world. I asked him to clarify some memories I had of his brother Maxon. In the early ’70s when I first met him, he lived three blocks away from me and I remembered him as much more well adjusted and “normal.” He had a job as a car mechanic at a garage downtown. After work one day, I remembered visiting him and he had an attractive girlfriend cooking him a spaghetti dinner while he watched TV and had a beer. I wasn’t sure if that was a dream I had or not. He said it was not a dream, told me Maxon took LSD for the first time shortly after that and it didn’t interact well with his epilepsy. He was never quite the same. It had the strange effect of “tightening” up his artwork for the better, though.

Click Your Way Out

• What made photographer Peter Hujar a “genius about sex”? (Having sex with 15,000-plus people was only the beginning.)

• Rachel Zegler, you are a goddess and you are forgiven for Snow White, possibly the worst movie I have ever sat through in a theater.

• Sara Holdren loved Titaníque.

• Where to buy Lena Dunham’s $3,600 custom sobriety-chip necklace.

• This is the order in which to read Laurie Colwin’s novels.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Come see Julia Wertz and me this Wednesday at Books Are Magic!

POLITICS

Another Eric Adams Main Character Is in Trouble

Are we about to witness the fall of a Zero Bond buddy?

Eric Adams’s post-mayoral life began with a boom, then a bust. In early January, he launched a meme coin to combat antisemitism and promote New York City, which was immediately hit by a rug pull (apparently not by him), causing most of the people who “invested” in the useless asset to lose their “investment.” Since then, he’s been quiet. Oh, and then there was the surprise announcement today that he was granted Albanian citizenship. Mirëseardhje, Mr. Adams.

But if you thought the allegations of financial impropriety in Adams’s orbit were over, then you don’t know these guys. I’d like to note an Adams-adjacent indictment from earlier this month that went a little under the radar. On April 1, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Zhan “Johnny” Petrosyants with conspiracy to commit health-care fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and aggravated identity theft, among other things. FBI agents arrested him after he landed at JFK from a trip to Milan.

Do you remember this guy? Petrosyants and his twin brother, Robert, hung with Adams at his preferred members-only club, Zero Bond; Adams was seen often at Osteria La Baia, the Theater District Italian joint the brothers run. Adams reportedly slept at Johnny Petrosyants’s condo in Trump Tower sometimes, though Gracie Mansion was a quick car ride away.

The alleged scheme was a classic, one that has been pulled off before him by the likes of Tony Soprano in season one, a bunch of former NBA players in 2021, and a massive health-care company run by Florida senator Rick Scott back when he was in the private sector. Beginning in 2018, the Feds say that Petrosyants submitted tens of millions of dollars of claims to auto-insurance companies for nonexistent medical procedures, then laundered the cash through a jewelry business in the Diamond District.

Petrosyants has pleaded not guilty, but this is not the first time he has been charged with a crime related to auto-insurance fraud. In 2014, Johnny and Robert pled guilty in a similar scheme involving auto-insurance fraud and billing medical providers. When Adams was pressed on the matter, he said his friends from Turkmenistan deserved a second chance. And with that grace, Petrosyants engaged in the same crime, allegedly.

INTERNET THINGS

How to Text After a Bad Date

If you follow Twitter’s advice.

This week in Discoveries From Becca’s Timeline: Lena Dunham returns to Twitter, another person claiming to be an empath proves they are the opposite of that, Charlie from Girls is going to be a father, and more from the internet of the absurd.

Lena Dunham is back tweetin’ in advance of her book release.

Incidentally, Bald Ann Dowd met Real Ann Dowd.

I don’t totally understand this joke format, but, hey, I giggled.

A new horrific text response has entered the discourse, and people are riffing on it as the gods intended.

Also: Aubrey Plaza is pregnant with Charlie from Girls’s baby! Some people are being weird about it, but let’s just ignore that, shall we.

Click Your Way Out

• The newly renovated New Museum is held together by tape.

• Dads would rather take ’shrooms than go to therapy.

• Patrick Radden Keefe really likes yogurt.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

• Crossword.

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It’s the weekend and I am layering up and going to the beach, although I worry that my friends are going to regret that decision as soon as we get there. I am reading Down Time, by Andrew Martin. I am drinking full-strength soda and rewatching Better Call Saul, but only the crime stuff.

RACKETS

You Can Now Rent a ‘Celeb’ by the Hour

No, not like that.

What’s the opposite of a recession indicator? Maybe it’s the new business from Flipping Out star Jeff Lewis called Fan Social, in which regular folks — fine, super upper-middle-class people with serious expendable income — pay to hang out or get dinner with niche celebrities. It’s similar to Cameo, except in real life, and obviously you’re picking up the check for lunch with Tom Arnold or the course fee for golf with former “Showtime” L.A. Laker Byron Scott. To understand more, I spoke with Rebecca Jennings, who wrote about Fan Social and this new way of parting people from their money in our latest issue.

Is this thing an app or like a social experiment let loose upon the world?

Technically, it’s an app. But, yes, spiritually more of an experiment.

So what’s the logical endgame of paying for the time of “celebrities” by the hour — that you could get one of the kids from Mrs. Doubtfire to babysit your kids? Can we invent celebrity Taskrabbit? This is a weird world we’re entering.

One of the founders described it as Uber for celebrities, this thing where they can make money in the pockets of time when they have nothing else going on and where all they really have to do is talk about themselves. On Fan Social’s menu, you can go golfing with a former Laker, you can have lunch with Chris Hansen, you can have one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey officiate your wedding. You can imagine a future where one of the kids from Mrs. Doubtfire could babysit for you.

The Bravoverse is kind of perfect for this, on both the supply and demand sides. Do you think that this can or will expand beyond that tier of celeb?

The Bravoverse is sort of ground zero for parasocial relationships, and so it naturally works well. I know that they want to expand, especially to athletes in smaller markets. A lot of people that pay for this, they don’t live in New York or L.A. where most of these celebrities live. So they see a lot of opportunity among stars that are based in places that are not New York or L.A. and have some kind of local appeal there, which makes a lot of sense.

I was thinking that the local retired pro athlete is perfect for this. Like a middle manager in Salt Lake City would pay a bag to get lunch with one of the ’90s Jazz players.

People have always been able to do this, but normally you had to know someone who knew someone or who could, you know, reach out to their agent. But now, this has just standardized things.

We have democratized lunch.

DWEEBS

Unfortunately, You Do Need to Pay Attention to Musk

Start with this new book.

I’ll admit it: For a while there, I tuned out Elon Musk. After the DOGE incursion, I did not want to hear about his immature jokes and the enormous government contracts handed to the world’s richest man. But in their new book, Muskism, authors Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian argue that it is important to stay tapped in. If the model of Fordism helped build the 20th century, Musk’s business model — in which he makes the federal government dependent on his many companies — is defining the 21st. I spoke with the authors for our “Just Asking Questions” series. The good news is that if you pay attention to the top-line stuff, like how NASA and the Pentagon rely on this erratic oligarch to a scary degree, you can ignore the jokes on X.

OOPS

We Are Getting Some Awesome Corrections

The FT and NYT are giving me something to live for.

In magazine world, you’re supposed to wait until there are three of something to declare it a trend and prematurely overexpose it. But this is a newsletter, and I want to talk about some wonderful corrections coming from the newspapers.

Let’s begin with the New York Times, which printed a few hundred thousand copies last week with an op-ed on President Trump’s NATO ambivalence. The headline read, “A North American Treaty Organization Without North America?” Well, no. It’s North Atlantic, and that’s tough. You gotta eat that one.

This morning, editor Daniel Sugarman found another fun one, posting on X:

Hopefully, Brown, who writes about shame and vulnerability, can find some humor in this; perhaps it is a test to see if she is really in her “fuck it” era. Either way, I am thankful to our copy department for saving me from writing stuff like how “Mark Carney is solidly in his North American Treaty Organization era.”

Click Your Way Out

• The marriage of traveling pants.

• Melania Trump gets her own jet.

• Speaking of rackets: An astrologer is making bank day-trading.

• Is the last season of Hacks any good?

• Crush Week continues.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

• Crossword.

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I will be back tomorrow after watching the Knicks-Celtics functional ECF preview while shivering in my apartment tonight.

PETS

Good Pups, Bad Owners

The real crisis rocking the city.

My stepmom is always threatening to send me a surprise animal. I grew up with tons of dogs — at one point in my childhood, there was a Chihuahua, a bulldog, a golden retriever, and a Great Dane living with us — but living in a fifth-floor walk-up in New York City and having an unreliable schedule do not lend themselves to having a “fur baby” of my own anymore. And while in theory I’d love a dog, aren’t there enough of them in the city already? Nobody knows for sure, as Rachel Sugar reports:

There were about 100,000 licensed dogs as of 2024, but that accounts for only a small fraction of the canine population, which is mostly composed of scofflaws. (An annual dog license costs $8.50 for dogs that have been spayed or neutered.) The latest New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, from 2023, found about 15 percent of households had at least one dog, a fraction of the national average, which, according to 2025’s American Veterinary Medicine Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook, was 42.6 percent. Still, the number that gets tossed around is about 600,000 — a lot of dogs.

The problem is not so much that we seem to be outnumbered by dogs but that some owners no longer observe basic rules of pet decorum. Kip Gleize, a restaurateur whose current projects include the Brooklyn spots Margot and Montague Diner, tells Rachel she stopped someone from bringing in their dog, then watched as they left, studied their phone, and then marched back in. “They’re like, ‘Actually, it’s a service dog, and you’re not allowed to ask us for proof.’” Huh!Maybe we need to invent a new name for dog owners like this. My suggestion: Kibble Karens.

THEATER

Cats Are Back Where They Belong

Slaying the house down boots on Broadway.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball opened last night at the Broadhurst Theatre. I saw the original Off Broadway production at the Perelman Performing Arts Center back in 2024 and had the same reaction as everyone else: “Wait, Cats can be this good?????” Turns out setting this musical in the ballroom scene is one way to save it from being the punch line it always has been. Jackson McHenry writes:

What powers The Jellicle Ball, in either instance, is the intuition that cultural products of opposite edges of 1980s New York City — the megamusical and the drag ball — can speak to each other. On Broadway, the show occupies the home turf of one form (though it really is too bad the Winter Garden is taken), so that dynamic is supercharged.

While it’s sad this production has lost the full runway it had downtown, I will be the first to say that venue gave me neck pain for days. I was seated on the side, and craning my head horizontally throughout to catch all the fabulous action was not ideal. There’s a reason the Arthur Ashe Stadium is a square and not a rectangle. Plus I found the Perelman subpar acoustically. I am beyond excited to re-attend The Jellicle Ball with a more comfortable neck and ears.

DINING

What’s in a Burger?

A classic beef patty is hard to beat.

Our restaurant critic, Matthew Schneier, tasted the chicken burgers at Ramblin’ Chick, the new Carroll Gardens venture from the Ample Hills couple.

The thing I couldn’t shake with either is that there’s a reason people don’t generally make burgers with ground chicken. Even thigh meat is leaner than ground beef, and the wetness of the sauces and toppings wasn’t enough to lend the burger itself the satisfying drip of a great patty. Taken alone, the patty has a rubbly chewiness.

I attended an early preview of Ramblin’ Chick and found the burgers flavorful but definitely in need of a fork and knife, basically immediately. Nothing wrong with that! My mom always says, “You know a burger is good when you feel like you need a bath afterwards.” Ramblin’ Chick should install a shower!

Click Your Way Out

• Even as someone who wrote his final college essay on Anne Hathaway’s career, I don’t know if I can emotionally handle the Mother Mary discourse.

• I have never had a crush on a co-worker, and for that I am extremely grateful.

• Shocker: Jill Singer is selling some great lamps.

• Incidentally, I need this massive steam mop ASAP.

• I am always excited to hear the opinions of our very own Brock Colyar.

• And I am just as excited to listen to America, Actually from our sisters at Vox.com!

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

Good-bye for now! You will probably hear from me again when Olivia Rodrigo’s single “Drop Dead” drops on April 17. Our girl went full Angie Jordan “My Single Is Dropping” on that one.

CELEBRITY

The Romeo and Juliet Story of Our Time

The Beckhams and the Peltzes, two households both alike in dignity, indeed.

Where were you when Brooklyn Beckham published his six-part Instagram manifesto denouncing his parents, David and Victoria, for their continued mistreatment of his wife, Nicola Peltz? I think I was at home, but I did say, “Whoa,” and the ensuing fallout affirmed months of tabloid speculation about a family coming apart. Bridget Read has spent the past several months — even before Brooklyn posted on IG — reporting on what went down between the Beckham and Peltz clans. We talked about weddings and wealth and what happens now.

Neither Brooklyn Beckham nor Nicola Peltz are really “celebrities,” yet when his Instagram story hit, it was like a tabloid earthquake. Why do people care so much about these two?

Victoria and David Beckham are beloved avatars of millennial nostalgia — the 1990s and 2000s that we’re reliving right now. They mean a lot to a lot of people. People kind of couldn’t believe that their son would forsake the pop-culture equivalent of the royal family. That combined with the length of Brooklyn’s statement — the amount of personal details it aired out. We’re not used to that level of confessional information from or about celebrities. It’s the type of thing we get from Instagram reality stars but not people from this echelon of fame.

I feel like when this drama was playing out in the tabloids late last year, most people I know (millennials) were predisposed to be on the Beckhams’ side of things.

I think Brooklyn’s statement really made people feel like growing up in the spotlight might have been hard for him. Everyone — or almost everyone — can relate to mother-in-law drama, wedding drama … It’s like a Shakespeare play. Even if the people are way fancier than you, you’re relating to their interpersonal drama.

Where I’m most interested in this story is the level of wealth. Victoria is literally Posh Spice. But she and David are outflanked by the Peltzes in a way that’s almost ridiculous.

Victoria and David are about as famous and successful as you can be in our modern era. They rode the wave of tabloid culture in the 1990s and 2000s, and now we see them wrestling back more control on social media. They were and are very canny in their ability to capitalize on that fame. Even then, you watch them online and they still have to bow and scrape to their audience. They have to do spon-con! That really shows you that these days, because of the way wealth has gotten so unequal, they aren’t “rich” anymore. That’s something that’s really happened in the past decade. This conflict between the families really lays that bare.

Is the wealth factor literally what “broke” the Beckhams? Or is it just a symptom?

It’s certainly a huge factor. In Brooklyn’s words, so many of the grievances are about control. The Peltz family’s wealth enabled them an enormous amount of control, and that allowed this conflict to escalate in a way it probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

What was the literal breaking point? The wedding itself?

It seems to be that this wedding grew and festered to represent so many other things for Brooklyn and Nicola. It’s almost unsatisfying to say that everybody in this story is right in some ways and wrong in others, but it’s true, as in almost all family dramas. Families love to hang on to grudges.

I semi-recently watched all of Neighbors on HBO, and I’m reading now that Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni had another failed settlement meeting. Was Brooklyn’s post an escalation, or was he actually trying to call it?

What’s kind of ironic is that his parents are known for really engaging with the media in a way that lets them benefit from, rather than be hounded by, the paparazzi. That was novel in the early 2000s. Brooklyn releasing that statement was using their playbook. It got his narrative out there. I don’t see how he thought that it would end it — and, of course, it only made everybody want to know more.

COMEDY?

Give Sia Her Own Show

She was the best part of Company Retreat.

The clunkily titled Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat ended last week. (Amazon, drop the Jury Duty Presents— it’s cleaner.) If you missed Jury Duty three years ago, the premise of Company Retreat is the same but with a new setting. Here, a random guy named Anthony works as a temp for a fake hot-sauce company about to get bought out by nasty VCs. Everyone on the show is an actor except poor Anthony. The jig is up by the penultimate episode, and then the finale goes over how exactly the team behind the show pulls it off, which is often ten times more interesting than the show itself.

I watched and enjoyed Company Retreat, but a big question started to emerge in this second season: Is this show … funny? It’s silly and lighthearted, yes, but the jokes and gags that defined Jury Duty were oddly absent in Company Retreat, with the exception of the always funny Rachel Kaly. I’m old enough to remember What Would You Do? The biggest laugh I got out of this new season was the extremely random cameo from Sia. Yes, that Sia. She was apparently a huge fan of the first season. Here’s how that went down:

The team rehearsed with Sia for about an hour. She brought her own take on the “character” of Sia: a financially strapped performer coaxed into the company talent show. She understood the setup and the game she would play with Anthony. “But really, a lot of those one-liners and jokes are hers,” David Bernad says.

Okay — so Sia is funny! Noted!

CINEMA

9 Better Movies Than The Devil Wears Prada 2

What post-Oscar-season doldrums?

It’s easy to feel depressed about the State of Cinema™ as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie sucks up the world’s money supply like Kirby and we’re endlessly bombarded with press for The Devil Wears Prada 2. But what the fat cats and bigwigs don’t want you to know is that we’re actually in the midst of an amazing month of movies playing here in New York. I liked The Drama — sue me! There’s also two searing and bitterly funny movies about the violence of our times: Nadav Lapid’s Yes! and Our Hero, Balthazar, featuring Asa Butterfield as you’ve never seen him before (blond). Christian Petzold’s divine Miroirs No. 3 is still up at Lincoln Center, if you feel like spending some time in the German countryside. Caroline Golum’s excellent (and 75-minute-long!) Revelations of Divine Love, a microbudget movie about the first woman to write a novel in English that was shot in a warehouse in Queens, keeps selling out its various weekend showtimes (but you can catch it at the Roxy soon). Exit 8, a freaky video-game movie that features zero Mario, Luigi, or Yoshi, is out this weekend, and next weekend boasts Sophy Romvari’s stunning debut feature, Blue Heron. New Directors/New Films kicks off this weekend with John Early’s directorial debut, Maddie’s Secret. Also: There’s an amazing series starting up at BAM featuring movies that feature … the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station! Chic! I’ve been there. Also 2x: I’m kind of obsessed with [checks notes] Jack Harlow programming Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies at the Roxy on my birthday? I’ll be at the spa … but you should go!

Click Your Way Out

• RIP my hopes of running into Daniel Craig and/or Rachel Weisz in Brooklyn.

• Ye is banned from the U.K.? If you say so.

• Per Ronan Farrow’s advice, carve out an afternoon (or evening) for his Sam Altman deep dive.

• Incidentally, it seems the AI walls are closing in.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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That’s all from me this week. I guess it’s back to the spon-con salt mines.

POLITICS

Trump’s Enemies List Keeps Getting Longer

Meet the enforcers prosecuting them.

Please, someone, protect Tish James. Donald Trump wants her out more than anything, and he’s willing to send the Justice Department after her in order to get his “revenge” for the civil charge she brought against him. As Andrew Rice reports in today’s big cover story, a lot of what Trump’s Justice Department is doing is, in fact, driven by petty vendettas against folks such as Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith who “targeted” the president after his first term. I spoke to Andrew about the differences at Justice between Trump’s first and second terms and the strange January 6 rioter who keeps popping up.

It’s my memory from Trump’s first term that there was a revolving door of officials across departments. With Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi now gone, it’s starting to feel like that’s happening again.

What’s different this time around is Trump has found a group of people that are much more loyal to him and to his project, and who do not view him as a way to achieve some other ideological end. I talk a little bit in the piece about how during the first term, there were a lot of people who were Federalist Society Establishment types who maybe wanted strengthening in the executive branches of government and so on, but they weren’t necessarily in it specifically to strengthen Trump.
They were in it for some kind of larger ideological, political project. This time around, it’s very much about pleasing one person.

How did you come to Jared Wise as the center of this story? He was encouraging people to assault police on January 6, and then the next thing you know, he’s inside the government.

To use a sports metaphor, “You take what the defense gives you.” Our original concept of the piece was to find out what was happening inside of Main Justice, and we were going to try to do that through a profile of Todd Blanche. For a variety of reasons, it became clear that doing that story wasn’t going to be the most effective way in. While that was going on, I had just seen mentions here and there of Wise and the role that he was playing in this Weaponization Working Group. Jared Wise’s personal arc was so indicative of this broader dynamic — starting with the irony of him actually being on trial on January 20, about to go to the jury when Trump was inaugurated, and then his case was just dropped. There’s this dramatic scene I describe in the lede where he basically taunts the prosecutor on his way out the door. She then ends up being fired, and he ends up being hired, and that really brought home the circular dynamic of all of this.

There’s a whole anecdote about an argument he gets into with a screenwriter friend over politics. Wise seems to be a kind of textbook example of a onetime “normal” conservative who then really commits fully to Trump.

He’s an unusual figure in a lot of different ways. He grew up with this very religious background, but he broke away from that. He becomes an FBI agent who traveled all over the world. Apparently, he loves wine? I heard that he went to culinary school at one point after he left the FBI. He worked at a vineyard at one point. But then, you know, he also had these very right-wing political views. I’ve talked with many FBI agents who are critical of Wise. There’s a lot of people within the FBI who opposed the dragnet approach to January 6, the idea of charging people who didn’t touch a cop or incite or engage in any violence. The idea of “We’re going to charge those people with felonies” was a controversial view within the FBI, one that was imposed by the DoJ under the Biden administration. But all that said, they felt as if Jared Wise was someone who crossed a line.

COUNTERPROGRAMMING

Me at the Masayoshi Takanaka Concert

I went to Easter’s hottest club.

Despite trying to be a person with taste, I actually have fond-ish memories of seeing 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie as a late-night “What the hell, sure” type of outing. If I had one complaint about the film — aside from the miscast voice performers and generally evil energy that emanates from the whole affair — it’s that the various beloved leitmotifs from the Mario games are pushed aside for cloying needle drops like ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” and A-ha’s “Take on Me.” I did not seek out The Super Mario Galaxy movie this past weekend (which doesn’t seem to need my contribution to its box office), but I did go see 73-year-old Masayoshi Takanaka play a sold-out show at the Brooklyn Paramount. Takanaka is a guitar virtuoso who plays a hybrid of jazz fusion and city pop that frequently sounds like the music when you’re racing around the beach in any Mario Kart game. He played for two whole hours to the world’s most rapt audience, all of whom sang along to his most famous melodies. The bulk of Takanaka’s music was composed in the 1970s and ’80s, but he’s had a resurgence in recent years, evidenced especially by the fact that nearly everyone at the concert was ten years younger than me. When he brought out his surfboard guitar during the encore, the guy beside me (dressed in a matching red tux like Takanaka himself) started crying.

ENTERTAINMENT

Want to Gossip About Helen Hayes?

Sit by The Comeback’s Jack O’Brien.

In the first two seasons of The Comeback, Valerie Cherish’s best friend and hairdresser was played by Robert Michael Morris. After he died, the show’s co-creators, Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow, knew they needed a kind of replacement for the third season — a chatty, funny foil for Valerie and her misadventures. Enter Jack O’Brien, a four-time Tony Award–winning Broadway director, more or less making his screen debut at the age of 86. Jackson McHenry met up with the director, and it seems like it was the most delightful afternoon ever. My favorite anecdote is how when he was directing Hairspray on Broadway, O’Brien told his actors to write “You’re not funny, it is” on Post-its to put on their mirrors, reminding them the script would do all the heavy lifting. That may be the case for his performance in The Comeback, but he’s plenty funny with or without a script.

Click Your Way Out

• Please join Vulture’s subscriber-exclusive newsletter Euphoria Club, else I’ll be watching this insane show for nothing.

• Cea Weaver has become a minor celebrity in the Mamdani administration.

• I want a NeeDoh, but I guess it’s too late. :(

• Are we on the verge of economic disaster? Perhaps!

• Misty Copeland’s beauty hacks.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

I’ll see you all tomorrow — get ready for major celeb gossip.

Happy Friday from the Chicago suburbs! I broke the Guinness world record for most time spent at LGA, but I did safely make it back to my Survivor superfan mom’s house at 3 a.m. Today, tweets, politics, and movie drama.

INTERNET THINGS

Self-Medicating With Twitter

To distract from mounting world horrors.

The good, the bad, and the bizarre tweets of Becca Schuh’s timeline return. Journalists are questioning why one of their own breathlessly described Rahm Emanual eating a salad, and the people are thrilled that TMZ is putting its stalking powers to good use. Also, big pharma called, and it wants its office supplies back.

Someone discovered some beautiful, amazing artifacts of a different era of medication propaganda. Here’s what we’ve lost …

Someone thought they were writing a good lede about Rahm Emanuel and a salad and, well …

TMZ has put its money where its mouth is — using its resources to embarrass politicians.

Related: Lindsey Graham was at Disney World, where Olaf fell over and died.

Someone decided to make the real heads feel real old.

POLITICS

America’s Next Top Attorney General Is …

… an Emmy-winning TV judge?

It seems Judge Jeanine could be getting another new job soon. Last year, the Fox News host made the legal equivalent of a Man of the Woods pivot when she was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. She tells Washington correspondent Ben Terris she was “living the good life at Fox … Think about it: hair and makeup every day.” But she’d also been considering a return to public life since before the 2020 election.

Over the years, Pirro had shown signs that she would be willing to leave the network for the right job. Ahead of the first Trump administration, Pirro had told his aides that she wanted to be attorney general. When it became clear that the job was going to Jeff Sessions, she pushed to be his deputy. Word going around at the time was that the Fox News personality couldn’t pass the laugh test as a serious government official.

There’s no laugh test anymore! And, sure, Trump has fired two of his female Cabinet members, but maybe the upside is he’ll replace Pam Bondi with another high-ranking woman. #LeanIn #IWokeUpLikeThis

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

The Zendaya Box-Office Test

Can she open a movie that’s not about sexy tennis players?

Speaking of unconventional girlbosses, did you know beautiful women can plot school shootings too? That’s the twist A24 is so desperately trying to keep under wraps in the Zendaya and Robert Pattinson two-hander The Drama. Sorry to possibly spoil the movie for you, but it seems the parents of school-shooting victims are way ahead of me. The question Vulture’s Chris Lee posed to experts is whether the controversy will help or hurt the film at the box office.

“On a whole, audiences will tolerate controversy if they’re pleased with the film and it gets good buzz. But no movie company wants somebody else stealing the narrative. The whole point of marketing is you define your message and get it out there. Suddenly here’s this train that is crossing your path and coming against you. That’s dangerous no matter what the film is. It’s going to harm your message.”

- Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter

Will you be seeing The Drama? Let us know in the Substack comments if you’re willing to give A24 your $200 or if you’re too offended this isn’t Challengers 2.

Click Your Way Out

• Is Ben Lerner hot in this photo, or am I just sleep-deprived?

• André Gregory pivoted to Reels for me.

• Why do Colbert writers make the best Grub Street Diets, and what will the column do when the show is over?

• Petition to rename this Staten Island stream “Elphaba River.”

• Seems like the Hudson River is healing, too. Battery Park Branzino, anyone?

• Do you feel bad for this woman who read her boyfriend’s ChatGPT messages about her? I do not!

• Matrix.

• (WARNING: expensive) Listings.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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I’ll be back next week joined by a few friends, including, perhaps, Reena.

MASTERMINDING

Olivia Rodrigo’s Winning the Week

New album? Check. Making Taylor jealous? Big check.

Hot off having a wall painted in Los Angeles, Olivia Rodrigo’s third studio album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, has been announced. Following this rollout has felt like covering breaking news on CNN. I’m the Christiane Amanpour of the Livies. I hope those painters were well-paid because that hideous curly font they used must’ve been quite the challenge. The album name is a bit of a mouthful and a departure from Olivia’s previous four-letter word titles, Sour and Guts. What will fans call it? YSPSFAGSOIL? The abbreviation reads dangerously close to “Yass, fag soil!” Maybe it’ll get shortened to Girl So in Love. The Pink-Wall Watchers seemed to have concluded that the album artwork is inspired by Fragonard’s “The Swing.” The painting was included in a March 4 Instagram dump by none other than Olivia’s alleged ex-boyfriend, Louis Partridge. If he’s dropping Easter eggs for her album, are they even broken up? Were they ever together in the first place? I will be staring at the painted wall for more clues.

The album announcement is sort of the least eventful thing happening in Rodrigovia, because we are in the midst of something like the Yalta of Pop. Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, alleged nemeses, were photographed together (back to back, but still) at Paul McCartney’s Los Angeles concert. The same night, Olivia was also photographed hugging the alleged “blonde girl” from “drivers license,” Sabrina Carpenter. Also present: Jake Shane and Tate McRae. Not relevant, but the two of them seem to be inexplicably omnipresent.

The Olivia-and-Taylor moment is hardly evidence of a treaty. Taylor surely knew that Olivia had an announcement this week, and in classic girlboss chart-obsessed fashion, decided to drop the music video fancam for her song “Elizabeth Taylor” earlier this week. The video, a compilation of various clips of Elizabeth Taylor, was not received warmly. There’s never been a better time to be Olivia Rodrigo. As of this writing, she has another scheduled post on her recently wiped Instagram. And that concludes today’s investigative report by your Pink-Wall Bureau.

TELEVISION

Survivor Influencers Have No Moral Compass

Did you know?

Last week, Emily finally watched an episode of Survivor 50 and unsurprisingly became a fan. I’ve been a member of the extended Survivor family for as long as I remember. That’s because my mom, Reena, whom you may recognize from covering the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for us, has watched every season but the very first as it aired on TV. She has also attended the finale in person multiple times and even made us put dirt on our faces and wear Survivor buffs for our 2006 family holiday card with the caption “Hope you Survive the Holidays.” I have retired from editing her audition videos, but Mark Burnett, if you are reading, consider this her application for season 51. We got on the phone to talk about last night’s episode.

All the players keep talking about how legendary this season is. Do you agree?

First of all, everybody playing is an all-star. Second of all, they’re revisiting a challenge every episode. That never gets old because they’re very grueling. This season is also in the hands of the fans. We make decisions as to how the game should go. Like now, there is the “Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol.” Because Billie Eilish is a superfan, and she wanted to participate. Her idea was that she had this Idol, and the Idol named after her boomerangs back.

Did you submit an idea?

I didn’t want to influence the game. I want the game to be played the way they want to play it.

The last time I watched religiously was Exile Island, and I remember thinking, This is dumb, just play the game. Over the years, they’ve added all these wackadoo things. Which of them have you enjoyed?

I enjoy Immunity Idols. They’ve also added things like losing your vote or getting an extra vote. And sometimes an advantage makes it more fun to watch, like with Ozzy winning tonight: The advantage he got by going to Exile Island kept him safe.

Given that this season is all about legends, it feels like so many of these people have made Survivor their full-time job.

For some of them, like Ozzy, yes. This is his fifth time playing. This is Cirie’s whole existence — she was on Amazing Race, she was on Big Brother, she was on Traitors.

Would you say she’s the biggest Survivor legend? During that final tribal council, they kept talking about legacy.

Well, she’s never won. But she’s played more games than anyone else there. But I wouldn’t trust her. I do think Colby played a respectable game. I hate Coach. I’ve hated Coach from day one. He calls himself — and I quote — “the Dragon Slayer,” and he’s just irritating. I don’t want him to be on the show. I would have been happier if he had been voted out instead of Colby. I’m mad that Colby’s not on the jury and Coach is.

And does it rub you the wrong way that Cirie is just a Survivor influencer now?

No, but my opinion about her has changed. In her first season, she didn’t know how to swim. And when she tried to complete the challenge, it was really hard for her. And everyone got up and cheered for her because she finally swam. But this is her fourth or fifth season. I would never cheer for her now because I feel like she’s really lost her moral compass.

KIDS

There Are Too Many School Holidays

Please someone think of the parents!

I am well-versed in random school closures. Growing up in a Chicago suburb, we had off on Sufjan Stevens’s favorite holiday, Casimir Pulaski Day, plus more Jewish holidays than the regular ones because the synagogues would use our public schools for overflow services. We also didn’t have class on cold days when kids couldn’t wait for the bus in minus-15-degree weather. Thank God my mom never got cast on Survivor! What would we have done if she were on some castaway island and I was suddenly home from school because of a Polish soldier?! Meanwhile in New York, the ballooning school-holiday schedule is stressing out parents, Audrey Goodson Kingo reports.

“Each closure poses a logistical and financial challenge for parents as they scramble to find babysitters, tap their paid time off, ask their bosses for leniency, or enroll their kids in day camps. At Hex&Co., a board-game café in Morningside Heights, a full day of holiday camp costs $170. At Private Picassos, an art studio in Clinton Hill, it’s $175. A day of camp at the Queens Zoo is $150.”

Boy, getting older must suck.

Click Your Way Out

• While it’s not surprising hibachi could upend a marriage, I never expected it could end like this.

• Ambassador’s Clubhouse is so themed that it almost feels like it belongs at Epcot.

• Wishcasting future New York City landmarks is the perfect distraction from … everything else.

• Why would anyone feel bad for Carolyn Bessette Kennedy? She owned at least three Birkin bags!

• Cinematrix.

• Crossword.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

Good-bye, Pam Bondi! FWIW, I always thought you were the most beautiful woman to ever work in a Trump administration, bar none! XOXO, Gay Guy.

INTERNET THINGS

We Would Never April Fools’ You. We’re Above Such Things.

However …

This morning, my children set my alarm to 7:30 a.m., so I got to sleep for an extra half-hour. They got my ass! Other April Fools’ pranks and shenanigans that were at the very least mildly amusing:

• This American Horror Story season would be so good, in fact. Unfortunately, it is not real.

• Sarah Pidgeon should totally star in My Year of Rest And Relaxation, but she isn’t going to. Unless!

• Haha, an award for best use of AI. Ahahaha.

• Timmy taking ballet lessons? Now I’ve heard everything!

• Archive of Our Own beta is now Archive of Our Own omega. This is funny if you’re a pervert, and I am (though unfortunately, omegaverse-lovers, YKINMK).

BRNDNG

Wearing Syrn Under Skylrk and Slathering On Cyklar

Or maybe vice versa?

Have you noticed that the celebs have been launching products with increasingly weird names lately? Ever wondered why this is happening? So has Chantal Fernandez:

Using real or stage names is typically out of the question because most celebrities start their skin-care lines with the goal of eventually selling to a larger business and stepping away. No one wants to risk seeing their namesake business being run without their approval, as has happened countless times in fashion to designers including Kate Spade and John Galliano. Instead, they want to copy Jennifer Aniston, who was a “product creator” and co-owner of Living Proof when it launched in 2012 and promoted the shampoo line until it sold to Unilever in 2016. The big beauty and apparel conglomerates also prefer that celebrity brands have more neutral names to protect themselves from any ugly associations with a rogue founder. For example, Kat Von D’s popular liquid-eyeliner makeup line rebranded as KVD Vegan Beauty in 2021 after a series of controversial internet spats. By then, she had sold the business and stepped down from any operational role.

Still, a middle name or a lesser-known part of a celebrity’s name can work, like Fenty, for example. Hailey Bieber was lucky to have a great middle name, Rhode, to work with. Unfortunately for Syrn (pronounced “siren”) lingerie-line founder Sydney Sweeney, her middle name is Bernice.

TELEVISION

A Quick Primer on the Summer House Scandal

Memorize the following in order to understand your Bravo-pilled friends’ crashouts.

As you know if you read this newsletter and have borne witness to my rapid conversions to “caring about Love Island” and “caring about Survivor,” I would rather rewatch literally any episode of The Good Wife for the fifth time than watch any currently airing reality show — it’s a fault in my personality. However, I am given to understand that people care about these Summer House cast members’ romantic lives a lot. So I’ve committed the following proper-noun-filled paragraph to memory, and you can too:

For a decade, viewers have cringed at Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke’s rocky relationship, the dénouement of which is currently playing out on season ten of Summer House. When the couple announced their separation in January, it seemed as though Batula would join the reign of hot divorcées currently running Bravo. That was before rumors began circulating on social media that Batula had been hooking up with West Wilson, another cast member who dated Batula’s house bestie, Ciara Miller, in 2023. One of the central narratives of season ten, filmed last summer, is the ongoing flirtation between Wilson and Miller, despite Miller’s residual humiliation at the way he’d dismissed her in the press after their breakup. Cast members (including Batula, Wilson, and Cooke) denied the rumors of them dating for weeks, but on March 31, the Bravoverse emitted a collective shriek when Batula and Wilson simultaneously posted on Instagram that they indeed had a relationship — er, “connection.” If this is Summer House’s Scandoval, it’s Miller, not Batula, who’s the Ariana Madix here, ready to turn her pain into the highest echelon of reality TV (hosting Love Island USA).

Summer House cast member Carl Radke has an actually cool-sounding alcohol-free bar in Greenpoint where watch parties take place, which is where I would go if I could fathom really understanding any of this. (Cut to a few weeks from now when I’m knee-deep in an obsession.)

Click Your Way Out

• Mickey Boardman’s closet drop, including a very appealing ashtray, is live.

• Do hangover supplements work? Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so.

• The best K-dramas of all time.

• Angela Garbes breaks down exactly how she affords those cool pants.

• Mother Mary, come to ME!

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

I’m taking off for spring break, but you’ll be in good hands!

SCHEMES

Does Your Pug Need an MRI? Head for the Border

As vet bills spike, pet owners are heading to Mexico to cut costs.

As anyone with a pet knows, those little jerks are expensive, and costs are rising in part because of private equity and corporate consolidation buying out private veterinary practices — just like in human medicine. If you have the option of leaving America to get your corgi’s teeth cleaned, why wouldn’t you?

Just as Americans are crossing borders and flying to other countries seeking cheaper dental and medical care for themselves, they are now doing the same for their pets. In border states, some pet owners caravan to Mexico to cut costs. Some people organize vacations around it: A hair colorist who works in Beverly Hills tells me her dad and stepmom in Arizona are part of a group that travels to Mexico several times a year to stock up on both human and pet pharmaceuticals. And of course, some enterprising Americans are now acting as middle men — offering concierge services to get pets across the border and back in the span of a single workday.

While only one veterinary school in Mexico meets U.S. accreditation standards, the rewards still outweigh the risks for many people and their pets.

RICH-PEOPLE PROBLEMS

A Cursed Supertall Is ‘Traumatizing’ Brokers

Pity the real-estate agents tasked with unloading units at 432 Park Avenue.

Units in the ultra-high-end tower on Billionaires’ Row have been selling at a loss since the building received a spate of bad press, not to mention its being the subject of a couple of lawsuits.

“Every time we tried to show, there was some article that would be really negative about the elevators or the structure,” a former broker in the building tells me. “I’m so traumatized.” To this broker, the question seemed to be: How do you try to solicit a client’s highest and best offer when the image of an elevator stalled above the cloud line is somewhere in their heads? This person listed one unit a couple of times, and showings seemed to go well enough. Except, when the offers came in from the prospective buyers, they were invariably lowballs — sometimes nearly 40 percent below asking. “The sellers would get really anxious,” this broker says. ”They’re trying to list something that is just such a depreciating asset.”

Another broker had a more positive experience selling a two-bed, two-bath unit that — while it went for a mere 17 percent below asking — still sold for $8.7 million.

DINNER TO GO

Where to Shvitz Without Running Into These People

In Queens, of course.

We recently read about New York City’s emerging “corporate bathing culture,” but for a more old-school experience you have to go to College Point, Queens, to lounge about at Spa Castle. I first started going back in the 2000s, and it was then and there that I discovered the joy of getting fully nude and allowing a strong, competent, and nonjudgmental professional to scrub off the top layer of my dermis. Nudity is an important part of the culture — there are sex-segregated, nudity-required whirlpool and sauna areas on the ground floor, and it’s honestly such a healing experience to be naked with every possible permutation of naked lady the five boroughs have to offer. We’re all just bodies!

The Castle has recently undergone a makeover, replacing some dated amenities and, sadly, getting rid of the jolie-laide pink-and-blue uniforms in favor of unisex bathrobes. The dark wood paneling that used to remind me of Spirited Away is now painted Mykonos blue and white. But the essential appeal is unchanged. The only problem is that if you have a “job” you can’t really come here on the genuinely peaceful, uncrowded weekdays and are forced to contend with the crowds who flock to the third-floor roof-deck pools and bar on the weekends.

As an experiment, Underground Gourmet Tammie Teclemariam decided to see if it was possible to “work from Castle,” setting out in the morning to Spa Castle and spending an hour and a half relaxing in the pools and wet sauna before getting Detox Scrubs, which involve an extra level of luxury because they wrap you in foil like a baked potato after scrubbing you and then leave you to marinate in lotion while the scrub goddesses shampoo and condition your hair and scratch your scalp in a really satisfying way. Then we repaired to the second floor with our laptops, and I wrote this newsletter. There is food here (Tammie ate a hot dog and a bag of barbecue chips), but I decided to save my appetite for wherever the Underground Gourmet would take me afterward, which we’ll have to learn about in tomorrow’s newsletter. Should we take the Party on the road? Please write to me at dinnerparty@nymag.com if you have ideas about where Tammie and I should go next.

Click Your Way Out

• This seems to be important news to Summer House fans.

• Just don’t comment on people’s bodies! It’s not that hard!

• “The conversation around bodies is super rancid right now.”

• Great formalwear options for people who don’t love wearing a dress.

• I don’t care what you say, “stargazy pie” sounds vile.

• Requiring remote workers to return to the office can create a bad situation.

• I can die happy now, my greatest goal has been achieved.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

Tomorrow: dining in Queens and whatever happens next!

MUSIC

Let’s Get Phil Collins Into the Rock Hall of Fame!

Devon Ivie won’t know peace until the “Sussudio” auteur is inducted.

After reporting on Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees for five years, Devon Ivie is now in her second year as an actual voter. You will have to watch this video to see whom she chose. She had seven spots on her ballot and had to choose among these 17 options:

If I had been allowed to vote, I would have voted for Mariah, Phil, Lauryn, INXS, Joy Division/New Order, Sade, and Shakira. Reasonable minds may differ.

TELEVISION

What Is Up With The Pitt’s Dr. Al-Hashimi?

I know. Sepideh Moafi knows. You are gonna have to wait to find out!

Roxana Hadadi interviewed Sepideh Moafi, who plays the divisive and mysterious Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi on The Pitt season two. From the beginning of the season, Moafi’s character has been displaying a distressing tendency to freeze up and stare into space for a second in the middle of treating patients, including Baby Jane Doe. Roxana presents one possibility: “My guess is she lost a child and is traumatized by that guilt. What’s your reaction to that theory?”

I love that this has stirred up so much mystery and speculation. That is what art does. From the callback, I’ve known what’s going on with my character, and nobody else in the show did. At the end of episode one, where Dr. Al-Hashimi is looking at the baby, people were asking me, “Do you know what’s happening? What’s going on here?” I would always ask them, “What’s your theory? What do you think?” And everybody had a different answer. At a time where we are so divided and so isolated behind our screens, it’s so cool that this is a moment where screens are actually stirring conversation. But I can’t tell you what it is.

I love that none of the other actors knew what the deal was! I am not allowed to reveal spoilers here, but if you see me in person, I’ll probably tell you.

SKINCARE

These Are the Amazon Sale K-beauty Must-Haves

According to Carol Lee (and Hudson Williams).

As you already know if you shop for a hobby, there’s a big sale going on right now at the “everything store.” If you push your deeply held principles into that corner of your mind that’s only active around 3 a.m., you can snag some serious bargains! I spoke to our K-beauty editor, Carol Lee, about the products that work for me and an up-and-coming celebrity we’ve mentioned in this newsletter a couple of times.

Carol, what is centella and why is it in everything? (Including my beloved Centellian 24 Madeca Cream.)

It’s a plant, and it comes from Asia. I like it because it heals your skin and calms any redness. It’s also called tiger grass because there’s a legend that tigers would roll in it to heal their wounds. I love when something has centella in it, because I have rosacea and pretty sensitive skin, so I implicitly trust products with centella more. Of course, you can’t always tell how much centella is in a product or whether the product just has a little bit of it. It’s in a lot of Korean products because Korean skin care generally focuses on things like strengthening your skin barrier and counteracting pollution, which there is a lot of in Korea.

I actually took a chance on the Celimax Derma Nature cleansing oil, which is different than the Manyo one that I usually buy, which seems to be out of stock at the moment!

I mean, Hudson likes it, and it’s only $13. You’ll have to report back.

Okay, so Carol. Be so real with me for a second: Serums. Toners. Masks. I just don’t want to ever use them. This is just too complicated for me, I’m sorry. I’m never going to do anything except wash my face and put on moisturizer. I can’t handle any additional steps. Is something bad going to happen to my face?

You don’t have to do any of that unless maybe your moisturizer isn’t cutting it in terms of moisture. In that case, why not just get a more hydrating moisturizer? In terms of the health of your skin, as long as you’re cleansing, moisturizing, and putting on SPF, I don’t think there’s anything that you have to do.

Thank you for giving me permission to continue to live my lifestyle.

Click Your Way Out

• This “luxury” birth center turned out to have, among other problems, fleas.

• States across the country are considering cuts to a program that covers about a quarter of the roughly 1.2 million people in the U.S. living with HIV.

• The Comeback’s Dan Bucatinsky watches Friends with his kids, who call Lisa Kudrow “Aunt Lisa.”

• We can finally live our dream of marrying Mariska Hargitay.

• How Lena Dunham became a filmmaker.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

Tomorrow we’re exploring bathing culture. Seriously! Stay tuned.

INTERNET THINGS

It Was a Seven Dogs Kind of Week

Bad things continue to happen, but at least one brave corgi got famous online.

This week, Becca Schuh’s algo served up some bangers: tweets from someone named @TwinkTheory; massive airport delays (but funny ones, incredibly); kidnapped dogs that escaped their captors, traveled home in a convoy, and went viral (and will probably become a Pixar movie); the forthcoming child of Taylor Lautner Squared; and improbable headlines that will echo in our skulls for days to come.

Clavicular was arrested for battery against … alligators?

Seven dogs decided that the people needed some good news.

I’m going to need more info about the amputee/cornhole player/murderer.

Taylor(s) Lautner are expecting a child, and the people have just one question. Will it also be named Taylor Lautner?

Things are not going well at the airport, and everyone’s timelines (literal and digital) will suffer for it.

TOO BAD, SO SAD

Want Your Wedding in Vogue?

Try harder next time!

Can you imagine being a fashion-influencer girlie or B-list celebrity who has called in every possible favor and dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars curating her wedding with the dangled promise of it being featured in Vogue, only to have Vogue bail at the last minute because the photos weren’t good enough? At least one woman has lived this nightmare.

Vogue asks couples to submit a dropbox of 75 to 120 images arranged chronologically. “Something can sound like the most exciting wedding in the world on paper; it can have the fashion, the planner, the location,” says lifestyle editor Liam Hess. “But if the pictures aren’t up to scratch, then it’s not publishable, essentially.” That’s why Vogue generally doesn’t confirm coverage until it sees the images. “So you have to tell the brides on their honeymoon, ‘Sorry, they said no,’” says publicist Kaitlin Phillips. One woman in the fashion industry had a breakdown after Vogue turned her down. “She burned bridges with a lot of the friends who participated in her wedding as unpaid vendors, blamed the fiasco on all of her guests, and then she checked herself into a ‘trauma retreat’ for over a month,” says one of the attendees.

You may want to check into a trauma retreat after reading this article, but persevere — the Schadenfreude is worth it.

THEATER

Let’s Hear It for the Groffies

Apparently, Jonathan Groff brings out something feral in the ladies.

I love the talented, handsome, spit-y Broadway (and Glee and Frozen) star Groff as much as the next person. But not as much as these women, who have been spending thousands of dollars on tickets and traveling to see him strut his stuff as Bobby Darin. Part of the allure is that there’s an audience-participation bit in the show, where Groff picks a lady from the crowd to dance with him.

The show is performed in a theater built like a supper club, with rows of cabaret tables directly in front of the stage where seats are reaching $1,499 for Groff’s final performances. It’s from that premium seating section that Groff tends to pluck a member of the audience for the cameo during the curtain call. “Will you dance with me?” he asks. Then he twirls her — it is almost always a woman — and passes the sequin-encrusted microphone so she can sing a line from “Dream Lover.” He kisses her hand and calls out, “Let’s hear it for her!” The crowd roars, and phones record the secondslong interaction, which then invariably is shared on social media. Within months of the April opening, the bit had been disseminated widely enough that redditors and Facebook members were strategizing about how to land the dance for themselves.

There are a lot of winning strategies, but looking the part is big. This weekend is the Groffies’ last chance — next week they will be vying for the attention of Jonathan’s Glee colleague Matthew Morrison. Congratulations to both of these men for surviving Glee, in all seriousness. Many were not so lucky.

Click Your Way Out

• How Charlie Puth’s yacht-rock song — featuring Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald — came together.

• Novelist Julia Langbein refuses to add protein to her meals — too American.

• Courtney Barnett has a new album out and is obsessed with The Pitt.

• Podcaster Morgan Stewart needs this electrolyte water.

• Artist Lisa Hanawalt loves playing Perfect Tides.

• Sari Botton interviews Lena Dunham.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

  ---

I’m so excited to go home and watch Glee with my children tonight, speaking of Glee! They’re almost certainly too young for Glee, but aren’t we all?

TELEVISION

Is Christian Hubicki Getting the Winner Edit?

I finally lost my Survivor virginity.

Survivor expert Carrie Battan guided me through the complex feelings I immediately had about Survivor 50, a show I am deeply invested in (as of last night.) This morning, we compared notes about the episode in which, per our recapper, the game started to speed up.

Maybe this is my internalized misogyny jumping out, but I kind of didn’t find any of the women that interesting. And that girl who got kicked off — who cares? Sad to see her and her terrible eyelash extensions go, but at least now she can get them removed by a professional, because, honestly, going into the Survivor situation with eyelash extensions is crazy work. Also, just in general, I think they should focus more on the “survival” part?

This was a very male-led episode for sure. Survivor used to take place over the course of 39 days on the island, and since COVID, they’ve reduced it to 26 days, so there’s no actual surviving. They don’t focus on camp life at all. Nobody’s building a shelter. They’re all just strategizing and gaming. In the early days, they were so starved that they became really lethargic, so they weren’t entertaining. There’s this delicate balance the producers have to strike between starving them enough to make it seem legit but also not putting them into such a physical state of depletion that they literally cannot burn the calories that would be necessary to backstab someone.

All of the conniving and strategizing and stuff — the reason people like it is because it reminds them of their jobs, right? It’s just like office politics.

That tells me a lot about how you feel about work. Yeah, it’s sort of like, What if I was rewarded for getting one over on my co-worker instead of being guilted for it?

I think we’re all playing Survivor, actually, because of capitalism.

I don’t think anybody’s viewing it through an explicitly Marxist lens, but, yes, sure. Relatedly: Nobody’s talking about the million-dollar prize, which used to be a big deal. But a million dollars is worth a lot less than it was in the year 2000.

If I had a million dollars, I could buy almost a quarter of a brownstone! Oh, you know what I would do? I would buy an investment property upstate, I guess, and maybe hire someone to manage it and go there some weekends. But not a nice one.

You could buy a studio apartment after taxes for sure. I would probably just put the money in a checking account and then online shop a lot for three years and then it would be gone.

That’s so real. That’s actually what I would do. It’s taxed like lottery winnings, right? So, like, it’s not actually a million dollars; it’s probably more like $800,000.

No, it’s closer to $600,000. Just order a ton of Seamless. Anyway, players now are not fighting for the million dollars. They see it more as an experience and a personal-growth opportunity.

Can we talk about the personalities at play a little bit? Like, I’m getting the sense that Christian is getting the winner edit. But, also, if he gets kicked off, I wouldn’t be surprised because — are people really too dumb to see that he is the biggest threat?

At this stage, with the edit that Christian’s getting, either he’s getting a winner’s edit or he’s going to go home really soon and they’re just trying to squeeze as much juice from his obviously entertaining run as they can. I thought he was going to go home last night, honestly. I thought Ozzy was going to pull it off, but Ozzy’s really not good at strategizing. Christian is definitely the No. 1 personality of the season so far. Angelina, the woman who went home, who you weren’t sad to see go, was on Mike White and Christian’s season together. And she was so entertaining on that season — an overachieving Tracy Flick, a really annoying, intense character. And she was shamed by social media so hard that she showed up to this season a shell of herself, so subdued. She has so many fillers. She got a lip flip. She got those eyelash extensions. She posted on Instagram that she had a competition with her friends to see who could have the biggest glow-up before Survivor started. And I’m like, It’s honestly fine to see you go.

Are any of the contestants hot?

There’s this term called island hot, and it’s people who start the show and you wouldn’t think they’re hot at all. And then five episodes in, you’re like, Is he actually island hot? Now that he’s tan and has a beard and is chopping coconuts, suddenly this person is attractive. Colby, who didn’t get a lot of screen time last night, he’s the original all-American prince of Survivor. He was in season two, and now he’s in his early 50s and he’s a Texas rancher. In another week, a little bit more time with his beard growing … I think he is objectively hot, but otherwise, no. There’s no frisson this season. There used to be sexual tension.

The show should be casting for possible island hookups, but that’s not a thing with this bunch.

It’s definitely not a thing anymore, but historically it was a thing. Two famous survivors, Amber and Boston Rob, actually met on an All Star season, and they got married and now they have four daughters, one of whom I think just graduated from high school.

Wow, that’s romantic! I feel like we only scratched the surface. Before we go — if it’s not Christian, could it be RizGod?

He’s somebody who’s been given a lot of screen time because he is young enough and internet savvy enough. I saw someone online say that every time RizGod talks, you wait for him to say, “Don’t forget to smash the ‘Subscribe’ button.” He speaks to the sensibility of teens and people in their early 20s, but he’s also good at Survivor. They like featuring him prominently for that reason, but I can’t see him winning. I can see him making it pretty far.

REAL ESTATE

A Little Loft, For Sale

Hanya Yanagihara is cashing out.

Got roughly $2.2 million to spend on a new apartment and need only one bedroom? You might want to check out the Soho loft that soon-to-be-former T editor and author Hanya Yanagihara is unloading. But why sell now, you demand?

The current listing price is an 8 percent drop from the initial asking in February but still about double the $1.069 million Yanagihara paid back in 2009. She may be hoping to move it since she paid $3.2 million in late 2023 for an 11th-floor, 4,000-square-foot co-op in a converted factory in Nomad.

This is not where I’d spend my Survivor winnings, but it would fit a lot of books!

ADVICE

A Picky Guy Recommends Suits, Snacks, and Shirts

Even non-guys will find something here.

I’m loving Michael Zhao’s new ‘Ask a Picky Guy’ column, even though I’m not particularly picky (except when I am) and I’m not a guy. All these suits look fine to me. I couldn’t tell you which shirt was Auralee and which one was Theory with a gun to my head. But I do have strong opinions about the outside-the-box gift options that Michael recommends, mainly that they’re all good. But especially this beverage option:

Villbrygg Fjell 01: Teetotaling diners at the buzzy New York wine bars Stars and Lei may be familiar with this sparkling blend of wild lingonberries and foraged botanicals. It rewards the close attention of a sophisticated palate, but, unlike de-alcoholized wine, it doesn’t taste like it’s missing something.

I don’t drink, and once I had a glass of this at Stars and it was literally the only time I’ve ever felt like any N/A beverage was a better option than Coke.

Click Your Way Out

• These two party-crashing interlopers duped a bunch of rich people.

• Big tech’s coming big-tobacco moment.

• Substacking your way to fame and … well, not exactly fortune.

• What it’s like to get therapeutic ketamine treatment, continued.

• “We cannot allow generous readers to become skeptical that authors and/or publishers are trying to trick them.”

• Everything you need to actually sleep on a plane.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Tomorrow: We scroll through Twitter for you so you can keep your hands clean.

OUR CURRENT NIGHTMARE

The Writers Who Can’t Prove They’re Not ChatGPT

Neurodivergent people and non-native English speakers are being falsely accused.

For good reason, we’re all on high alert lately for spotting when something has been written using AI. This week marked the first, but surely not the last, case of a major publisher scrapping a book after it was revealed that the author used AI. In the world I’m living in (fan fiction, yes, still), there’s been an echo of that scandal: An author named green_fairy has been credibly accused of using AI based on the sheer volume of their output. Even your humble Dinner Party host has been accused of using AI, which is extra funny when you consider that I have been posting my writing on the internet for 23 years, unwittingly training the bots to sound like me that whole time. My horrible robot children!

But before we get too trigger happy, we should pause and consider that some people just write in a way that seems like AI. Emma Alpern reports:

Carlos, a 24-year-old from Brazil, believes AI models and autistic people might have a similar media appetite, voraciously digesting large amounts of text. “Our social isolation — by choice or by ­exclusion — leads us to find alternative methods to emotionally connect to others,” he says, including deep immersion in comics or literature. (For him, it was an obsession with the Brazilian novelist, poet, and playwright Machado de Assis.) When he was repeatedly confronted on a Discord server for his suspiciously formal writing, “it became quite obvious to me that no matter what I said or what I showed as evidence, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy some,” he says. Another autistic person I spoke to, a high-fantasy writer named Kari who has been accused multiple times of using AI, says she has loyal readers watch her writing sessions on a video chat. The idea is they could testify on her behalf if she is accused of writing with AI again.

If having witnesses watch your writing sessions so they can affirm that you’re not writing with AI becomes more common in the years to come, I apologize in advance to whoever has to watch me. I am almost always biting my nails or eating something in a disgusting way.

INTO THE MATRIX

This Video-Game Designer Wants to Map Human Consciousness

Will Wright created is now making SimCity but for brains.

Wow, I would like to play Proxi:

He wanted to create a game in which each player could tinker with that unending maze of inner microverses, logging their recollections for an AI to analyze and mapping their own psyche the way they had mapped a digital metropolis in SimCity. It would be called Proxi: Yesterday’s You Tomorrow. The concept was part computerized LEGO set, part RPG, part Enneagram, part transhumanist mind-uploading fantasy, part reboot of Borges and Proust for the LLM age.

Unfortunately Wright has run out of funding, so for now we will have to continue to settle for “reading novels” or, maybe more accurately, “writing novels” or “going to therapy” or some mix of the three.

ADVICE

This Lady Keeps Bringing Her Husband to Things

There’s a reason he wasn’t invited, Janice!

Writes “I Don’t Want the Package Deal”:

My friend’s husband kind of sucks, and she brings him to everything. If we make plans without her husband, 99 percent of the time, she calls or texts last minute saying he’s jealous that we’re doing an activity he likes and/or doesn’t want to be home alone. I don’t care to spend my free time listening to straight men’s opinions. Our mutual friends feel the same. I know she’s lost other friends when she’s tried to do more double dates, but I’m not sure if she has put two and two together to figure out why. (My husband hates him.)

I think you can guess what the answer to this question will be, but it’s fun to read Amy Rose.

Click Your Way Out

• A Carroll Gardens classic gets a nicely uninvasive makeover.

• Blackout stickers are a cheap and satisfyingly obsessive way to get better sleep.

• Chess news: JoJo “Leave (Get Out)” Levesque will replace Lea Michele in June.

• Sign of spring: The Gilded Age is filming.

• I don’t know anything about March Madness, but I know plenty about Barf Badness.

• Should we say “I am poly” or “I practice polyamory”? Or neither!

• Hilton Als gets the knives out for the Whitney Biennial.

• “Gays are stunting their bush pride at warehouse dance parties across Brooklyn as well as on Instagram.”

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Tonight I am actually going to remember to watch Survivor!

MASTERMINDING

Olivia Rodrigo’s Stan Army Is Watching Paint Dry

For clues about her next album, obvs.

Periodically, Zach Schiffman stops by to unpack what the pop girlies are up to.

Before their alleged feud, Olivia Rodrigo was a devoted Swiftie studying up on Taylor’s most arcane Easter eggs. Now, she is putting that knowledge to use by tormenting her army of Livvies with a trail of pink and purple bread crumbs about her third album’s release.

The first clue came during a performance in October at the Park Avenue Armory, where Rodrigo wore a Miu Miu dress embroidered with green clovers. Fans took that as confirmation that the album would be called Luck, a theory they had developed based on various Instagram dumps featuring items — a tarot card that read “Luck,” playing cards, a rainbow, a ladybug — that could just as well be things any normal 23-year-old girl would put on Instagram. Fans also took that to mean the album would be announced on St. Patrick’s Day, which I guess we all associate with luck? Anyway, that didn’t happen.

Things revved up again last month when her producer, Dan Nigro, captioned an Instagram post featuring Rodrigo with “Finishing records …” Then on March 13, Rodrigo’s official website debuted a new “OR” logo. It was painted on a purple wall in Los Angeles and shortly thereafter on walls around the world. Over the next five days, Rodrigo’s team incrementally repainted the walls, transitioning from purple to blush pink. Fans camped out at the walls and hosted livestreams, literally watching paint dry for days on end. The stunt took Charli XCX’s Brat wall of 2024 and made it boring in an almost avant-garde way. Rodrigo’s website shifted colors as well, making the extremely boring stunt accessible to everyone. Fans documented the shifting colors like reporters at the Rodrigo Times.

Finally, last Thursday, Rodrigo, barefoot on a beach, graced the cover of British Vogue. The cover lines read, “I’m Definitely a Lover Girl” and “Pop’s New Romantic.” This was obviously, fans concluded, a Swiftie dog whistle. Lover is the title of Taylor Swift’s eighth studio album, and “New Romantics” is the title of a fan-favorite Target-exclusive bonus track off 1989. Ergo, Rodrigo is intentionally trolling her former mentor turned rival. In the Vogue interview, Rodrigo speaks about the new album in detail for the first time, revealing that it will be about the anxieties of being in love. Her vagueness lent credence to rumors that Olivia has not only split with her British boyfriend, actor Louis Partridge, but also scrapped an album inspired by the relationship after the breakup.

Whether any of that actually happened, by Friday the OR walls had reached their final shade of blush pink and the word love was painted on them in Rodrigo’s now-recognizable, uniquely ugly cursive font. Fans rejoiced. No other information followed. Is love the name of the album? A single? Just a vibe? Rodrigo then muddied the waters further by changing her voice-mail — a thing I guess pop stars do now — to this cryptic message:

If you are hearing this on the last day of Pisces season, March 20th, this message was meant for you. Take what resonates and leave what does not. Waiting for your destiny may feel like watching paint dry, but your patience will be rewarded soon. You may think you have all the answers, but the universe has more to share. The writing is on the wall, but the first message may not paint the full picture. Trust your intuition. Expect true clarity and renewal just after the pink moon. Until then, follow the stars, your guides, and your heart, knowing that the best is yet to come.

I don’t know why we live in a cruel world where pop-star rollouts have become elaborate whodunits that leave 29-year-old gay men watching paint dry on TikTok Live. What I do know is the pink moon is next Wednesday, so we can probably expect some sort of announcement on Thursday. Unless, of course, none of this meant anything at all.

POP CULTURE

Now More Than Ever, Musicians Are in Movies

Charli XCX is the “Madonna, ca. 1990–2000” of today.

Fresh off a Sundance Film Festival that featured not one but three Charli vehicles, Cat Zhang explores an ever-present trend that’s now growing omnipresent: music stars expanding their résumés via IMDb credits.

It isn’t just Charli XCX: Everyone from music’s biggest names to indie darlings is crossing over to film and TV. Musician-actors aren’t new (just look at the careers of Elvis or Madonna), but rarely have so many been onscreen at once — and not just in bit parts but as leads. “Everybody’s trying to understand what a ‘star’ is today,” says Dan Kim, a CAA agent. “Studios and networks are trying creative ways to populate their stories.” Artists offer cultural cachet and built-in fan bases ready to mobilize; in exchange, they receive both the chance to rebrand and relief from the same old routines. Friction between their real-life reputation and fictional persona can be harnessed for intrigue. And now anything — a Hot Ones interview or a concert recording — can serve as their informal audition reel.

Can Billie Eilish or Bad Bunny open a movie? Only time will tell!

BUMMERS

Daniel Radcliffe Gives Us a New Thing to Worry About

I was fine not knowing about the “Yellowstone volcano.”

Theater star and affable good guy (and new husband of our theater critic) Daniel Radcliffe answered the Maria Bamford questionnaire today. One of the questions is about worst fears. So far, so good. Except:

The Yellowstone volcano. If you’re not afraid of it, you should be. It’s overdue, and when it does erupt, we might lose half of the nation. I saw a documentary about it when I was about 13, and it immediately replaced my fear of nuclear war. It’s imminent in geological terms, but that could mean it could happen next year and it would be right on time, and it could happen in 10,000 or 20,000 years and it would still basically be on time. We’re on borrowed time.

Honestly, volcano, come take us now. We’re ready.*

Click Your Way Out

• Reading about these AI-slop fruit and vegetable videos really stressed me out.

• Testing AI-generated recipes results in some weird cottage-cheese goop.

• “The reality-TV equivalent of the Yalta Conference.”

• What Nicky Hilton’s kids can’t live without.

• Nobody wants office space in Dumbo, so the former Watchtower complex will become housing.

• One of the worst takes I’ve ever seen.

• The book doctor is in!

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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*The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory monitors volcanic activity and does not consider an eruption imminent.

ON THE COVER

Kerry Howley Wrote About the Camp Mystic Girls

Take a moment today to confront your worst fears.

I’m not going to pretend that today’s cover story is an easy read, but I believe in you and I think you can handle it. CW: child death, religious hypocrisy. Kerry Howley is a parent of young kids, and she managed to write this article over the course of six months. She cried every day. Also, the families of the drowned girls had to live through this. The least you can do is read about it! I talked to Kerry about her work.

What was it like to report and write this article?

I view myself as someone who can compartmentalize, and it just didn’t work in this case. But while it was hard and deeply emotional to have these conversations, writing this piece also felt incredibly easy. A lot of times when you’re writing, you’re beset by these questions: Does this matter? Does anyone care? What are the stakes? This time, those questions were not present. I would wake up early and stay up late, and that just felt instinctual. In a way, it was like the easiest six months of writing I’ve had. I was carried along by the necessity of this piece and the sense, also, that the story had been told, in some quarters, incorrectly.

How did you figure out the structure?

For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I would tell the story of that night because I wanted us to be with the parents. They’re lost and they don’t have access to where their children are and they’re literally miles from the camp — like, physically miles from where they last knew that their children were safe, and they’re not getting information, and there are these terrible press conferences where they’re just being stonewalled. I wanted us to be with them and kind of desperate to know and unable to get that information. So, then, when do you reveal what happened? Once the parents have fully pieced together the horror of what happened that night — and particularly how close those girls were to safety — that is the time to tell it. That’s why I withheld that information until the end.

Not to clumsily tack easy morals onto your story, which is very psychologically complex, but the response to the drownings seems to me very MAGA: “We’ve learned lessons in resilience from this unavoidable tragedy.”

I just think it’s deeply American. Prior to MAGA, it’s not like we did anything about school shootings, right? We still said, “There’s nothing we can do.” So many of the stories about Camp Mystic told on morning television or even the local news have a positive spin, like, “Oh, here’s how they found hope in their sorrow.” And ultimately I don’t think this is a story about resilience or hope. It’s a story of a complete failure of accountability.

How do you feel now that this is done and published and out in the world?

I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I feel physically changed. I feel like my body is different, lighter. I do feel like I’ll carry it with me every time I make one of those decisions about entrusting my children to somebody, but I don’t even know if it’s that personal. There’s something about the way we treat people who encounter our own worst nightmares, the way this country treats children who have died in school shootings, calling them “crisis actors.” There’s something about the large psychological group dynamics that I’ll never stop thinking about.

COUNTERPROGRAMMING

The Hot Divorcées of Bravo Are Role Models

Television is our friend.

Alyssa Vingan writes:

Around the time my life blew up in 2020, a similarly seismic shift was happening on Bravo. The Real Housewives of Orange County debuted 20 years ago this month and made for such compulsively watchable television that spinoffs in over a dozen affluent cities followed. Divorces from the early days of Housewives are scandalous and stuff of pop-culture legend, but they weren’t primary subject matter for the series or its offshoots. And the ones we saw were often tragic, leaving committed homemakers heartbroken (and just plain broke) while their husbands rode off into the sunset with their new, younger girlfriends. In recent years, though, there’s been a clear pivot on the network’s most popular franchises. Where the focus was once on housewives, it’s now on rich, hot divorcées publicly healing from toxic relationships and living their best lives. It might sound silly, but I’m confident that, had I seen this on my television when I was deciding whether to leave or stay, I would have left much sooner.

Don’t say Andy Cohen never did anything for feminism.

FOOD

The Best Delivery Dinner in NYC

Who doesn’t like biryani?

Tammie Teclemariam tells it like it is: Most delivery options are actually pretty gross in addition to expensive and low-key exploitative. One solution: order a reusable clay pot of biryani.

Like several delivery innovations, Biryani Bol started out as a pandemic pivot. At one of its early restaurants, “our biryani was served the traditional way — sealed in a clay pot,” says chef Chintan Pandya. “Guests constantly asked if they could take the pot home with them.” A few months of R&D ensued “and frankly a lot of biryani consumed by everyone around us,” Pandya adds. Eventually, they landed on a technique to handle most of the cooking in their kitchen, while customers take it over the finish line at home by popping each of the biryanis — chicken, goat, and vegetable are all available — in a 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes (in clay pots that, yes, you can keep and reuse).

Budgeting in the extra 45 minutes is the hardest part, but I’m game to try.

Click Your Way Out

• Dia Art Foundation director Jessica Morgan’s spare, perfect Soho loft.

• A first glimpse of Broadway’s new Rocky Horror. Rose tint my world …

• Why would someone use AI to write a book? Why wouldn’t someone use AI to write a book?

• Wolfbird is due to be updated by, probably, April 3. IYKYK.

• The “This is going to ruin the tour” meme is, sadly, not based in reality.

• “Will MomTok survive this?” grows stronger by the day, though.

• Crossword.

• Cinematrix.

• Telematrix.

• Horoscopes.

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Tomorrow: less of a bummer.