World
“The Rehearsal” Finally Achieves Liftoff
The second season of “The Rehearsal” is instantly better than the first because it’s about something. In the show’s previous season, Nathan Fielder developed and applied his methodology—the so-called...
Bill Burr Does Not Want to Talk About Politics
Journalism is not standup comedy. We’re not in the same world.So what do you think your responsibility is?My responsibility is to make you laugh. And, if I’m being malicious,...
My Brain Finally Broke
I feel a troubling kind of opacity in my brain lately—as if reality were becoming illegible, as if language were a vessel with holes in the bottom and meaning...
Disco Balls and Roller Skates, at Xanadu
In the lushly pleasurable Bobby Darin bio-musical “Just in Time,” by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, the director Alex Timbers ensconces his sweet-voiced star Jonathan Groff in a gleaming...
A Joyfully Chaotic Tribute to Pavement in “Pavements”
Rock documentaries and bio-pics have been parodied for nearly as long as they have existed, but there’s a reason for their ingrained absurdity that’s even weightier than fan service:...
Rumaan Alam and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Female Protagonist
The writer Rumaan Alam has noticed that readers, especially as of late, can be quick to dismiss novels that have characters they find unpleasant. But “when a character on...
The Miscalculations of COVID School Closures
On June 26, 2020, three months after the coronavirus pandemic had seized the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents about sixty-seven thousand pediatric physicians, issued guidance...
Why Even Try if You Have A.I.?
A couple of years ago, my wife bought my then four-year-old son a supercool set of wooden ramps, which could be combined with our furniture to create courses through...
For Watchers of “The Clock,” Time Is Running Out
“The Clock,” the addictive film masterpiece by the Swiss artist Christian Marclay, has been showing continually at MOMA since November, and some of us have become transfixed Clockwatchers, returning...
When Jews Sought the Promised Land in Texas
Ezekiel was an exile. Born in the kingdom of Judah, he survived the siege of Jerusalem, in 597 B.C.E., but afterward was banished with his fellow-Jews to Babylon. While...
