Culture Watch

-- from ringling.com, the company websiteSo what do you suppose the new administration plans to do to Save Our Circus and Make the Circus Great Again?-- Ken

Um, weaponized cheese?There are 8 million stories in the Naked City, and some of them are stories you know are serious but you nevertheless can't resist, you know, smiling at. Possibly even guffawing. Like this story from our Crime Watch team. -- Ken

by KenOkay, I'm gonna shut up in just a moment, because while it takes a heckuva lot to render me speechless, this has just about done it.Let's just first make sure that everyone actually still knows who/what Deep Throat is/was. A show of hands? You can put your hand down, Woodward; we know you know. And you too, Bernstein. Though I guess it's nice to know that you guys haven't forgotten. I mean, after all, the guy gave you two careers.But . . . but . . .

If you were planning to be in any of these afflicted affected areas of Manhattan tomorrow, you might want to rethink those plans."While the party bills itself as a 'charitable' pub crawl, it's had a fraught relationship with people who live in its path over concerns including public urination, death threats and numerous arrests. . . ."Last December, New York's SantaCon took to Twitter to brag about the fact that no one associated with their group was

The new NYRB has a terrific review-essay by Neal Ascherson on John le Carré, described by his new biographer, Adam Sisman, as "one of the most important English writers of the post-war period." To me this kind of understates le Carré's importance as a writer, but hey, that's me.by KenThe new (October 13) issue of The New York Review of Books was in the mailbox yesterday, and such free time as I've had since then has been heavily absorbed by an issue overf

"Before you take me away, I justwant to update my profile picture."by KenIt's time -- or more likely well past time -- to begin dealing with the rupture of the social fabric caused ty the menace of the electronic toys and the people who abuse them. You know who I'm talking about.

One more time --We first looked at this clip in the July 27 post "If the campaign is going to be a 'feelings' fight, is the handwriting on the wall?""What is truly revealing is [Antonio Sabato Jr.'s] implication that believing something to be true is the same as its being true. Because if anything, that was the theme of the Republican Convention this week.

by KenSo on Monday, as part of a sustained effort to avoid doing the mountain of stuff I should have been doing, I answered an e-correspondent's question about what I was doing, and I wanted to mention that I had just done a free download of a compilation of broadcast material over at Opera Depot featuring the German bass-baritone Theo Adam.Only I couldn't remember which bir

The last rehab of the Waldorf=Astoria lobby finally got it right -- and it actually looks better with people bustling in what is, after all, a hotel lobby.

At a press conference yesterday, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich says, "I'm trying to wrap my head around why I'm standing here and he's not. [Pause] And we all know why.""During interviews with Tim Duncan (a phrase roughly equivalent to 'during photo sessions with the snow leopard') the Spurs' immortal never resisted an opportunity to josh with a teammate who happened to walk by. It certainly disturbed the rhythm of the conversation—if it can be said that one rhythmically conversed with Duncan—but he wasn't sending a message to the reporter, but rather to the teammate.