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☆ The Gen Z Crossword Era
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-13 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

My 20-year-old niece, Emma, texted the other day to tell me she’s addicted to The Times’s game Connections; she and her friends play every day, along with the Mini and Strands. “The people who make the games need to make more fun games,” she declared. I don’t mind her treating me as her personal on-demand suggestion box for The New York Times; she’s my personal on-demand focus group for Gen Z. She’s used to my asking her about Snapchat etiquette, or which athleisure brands are cool, or if it’s true that her generation is grossed out by feet. I’d read about how younger people are getting into puzzles, but this was the first time my Gen Z rep had volunteered a report from the field. I, too, love Connections, but my deepest and most abiding puzzle romance is with The Times’s crossword.

Persons: Emma, texted, ”, I’d Organizations: The New York Times

☆ In Praise of Tiny Triumphs
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-30 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Spring arrives, and with it, a semi-annoying, semi-invigorating mandate to spring clean — to clear out spaces both physical and psychological. Because I am constantly looking for reasons to get rid of old things, old ways of thinking and being that have outstayed their usefulness, I’m drawn to spring cleaning as an annual rite. But because I am also constantly reckoning with a pesky sense of dread regarding obligations of any size, I also find the concept of spring cleaning over-ambitious and intimidating. and panic (it’s that time of year and, once again, I have waited too long to call the accountant!). Then she mentioned how accomplished she felt after sewing a button on a shirt to ready it for the sale.

Persons: I’m

☆ The Music That Made Us
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-23 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Adam rises from his desk and goes to the next room, where he drags a bin of memories out from under the bed. “Johnny Come Home” is one of those songs that evokes the ’80s so acutely for me that I was already experiencing flashbacks to my own adolescence before Adam began to excavate his. I hear it and I’m returned to my childhood bedroom: the boombox with dual tape players, pink wall-to-wall carpet, a diary with a lock. I hadn’t listened to Fine Young Cannibals in many years, but returning to their self-titled album now, I was curious to see if it would arouse the same emotions (anticipation mixed with melancholy). What happens when we re-encounter them later, when we’ve certainly changed, and perhaps they have too?

Persons: Andrew Haigh’s, Adam, Andrew Scott, Johnny Come, ”, We’re, Johnny, I’m, hadn’t, Fine, we’ve Organizations: Fine Locations: Irish

☆ In Search of Spring
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-16 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

When does spring begin? For some, it’s the second Sunday in March, when we turn our clocks forward by an hour in the United States. It’s only a three-hour flight from La Guardia (rainy, cold) to West Palm Beach (sunny, 81 degrees, slight breeze), and from there an hour’s drive to Clover Park in Port St. Lucie, the spring training home of the New York Mets. Here in Port St. Lucie on a Tuesday afternoon, weeks before the season’s official start, cheery fans were decked out in team merch, drinking Modelo Especial tallboys and snacking on peanuts, reeling off stats, heckling the players. Here, spring was already happening.

Persons: they’ve, Lucie Organizations: Hemisphere, La Guardia, Palm, Clover, New York Mets, Yankees, Yorker, Modelo Especial Locations: United States, La, Port St, New York

☆ Cramming for the Oscars
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-09 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’m in competition with no one but myself in trying to view all the major-category nominees for the Oscars before the ceremony tomorrow night. I’m doing well this year, probably because the slate is fairly small: Most of the films with acting and screenplay nominations are also contenders for best picture. The problem with cramming for the Oscars, as I do every year to varying degrees of success, is that it renders one cinematically wearied. If I fail to squeeze in a nominated film before the ceremony, I’ll probably never see that film at all. I love the Oscars, with all their pageantry and pomposity.

Persons: I’ll, Mark Harris, ”, Harris, ’, “ we’d Organizations: Hollywood

☆ An HGTV Star’s Party Inspires a Question: What Makes a Home?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-21 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | Dolly Faibyshev | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

What makes a house a home? On Tuesday night, that question floated in the delicately candle-scented air of a three-story penthouse apartment on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan where the interior designer Jeremiah Brent lives with his husband and fellow designer, Nate Berkus, and their two children. An intimate gathering of about 30 guests had assembled to celebrate the publication of Mr. Brent’s first book, “The Space That Keeps You,” a collection of photos and stories of interesting people and their enviable houses. For Mr. Brent, who along with Mr. Berkus is a mainstay on HGTV with shows like “The Nate & Jeremiah Home Project,” a home is a “weird blend of space and place.”

Persons: Jeremiah Brent, Nate Berkus, Brent’s, Brent, Berkus, Nate, ” Organizations: HGTV, Jeremiah Locations: Manhattan

☆ Exploring the Backyard
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-03 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For more than 20 years, the British adventurer Alastair Humphreys roamed the planet. He rowed across the Atlantic, traversed India on foot, cycled around the world. Each hyper-detailed map includes not just roads but footpaths, vegetation and variations in terrain. Humphreys commits to deeply exploring one small segment of his map per week, to getting intimate with his immediate environment, by walking or biking every millimeter. “I wanted it to be serendipitous, not governed by my preferences,” he writes.

Persons: Alastair Humphreys, ”, Humphreys, I’ve, “ Organizations: Ordnance Survey, U.S . Geological Survey Locations: British, India, U.S

☆ The Debate Over January
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-20 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Winter friends — those who, contrary to all hedonic and circadian sense, love dark days and black ice — have been forwarding the story to me, triumphant, as if once and for all it’s been settled, the pointless, perennial battle of the seasons. Everyone just wants to feel better, I get it, but resisting their campaign is a twisted part of coping with the season. I spent the week exchanging snapshots with friends in Mississippi, their mutt cavorting in the snow-covered yard (look how cozy! Another friend asked if I didn’t find the cold and snowfall moody and melancholy, in a good way. It’s a case that the poets have been making for eons: “Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold,” Shakespeare wrote.

Persons: Steven Kurutz’s, mutt cavorting, ”, Stu, Roz Chast’s, Shakespeare, what’s Locations: Mississippi, New

☆ Behind the Book Review’s Best Books List
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-25 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Some people come with prepared speeches in support of the book they’re nominating. By the conclusion of each meeting, it’s clear which books are garnering support and which are losing steam. “There’s sometimes an assumption that we are trying to send a statement with the list,” Gilbert said. But both he and Tina were adamant that the list is not political, and the only statement they’re making is “these are the best books of the year and you should read them.”“We’re not engineering the list in any way,” Tina clarified. “We’re not saying, ‘Oh, gosh, at least three of the books on the fiction list need to be by women.’”

Persons: ” Gilbert, “, Gilbert, Tina, ” “, “ We’re, ’

☆ Our Merch, Ourselves
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-11 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Why do we buy merch, or shy away from it? What does the merch you wear say about who you are, what you believe in? Carrying the bag in your own city seemed too boosterish, too earnest for a New Yorker, whereas outside the city, the local merch telegraphs your hometown pride and N.Y.C. Once you leave the place, the merch becomes a souvenir, a nostalgic keepsake. Debating the laws of merch is a diversion, an amusing exercise in questioning our own pieties.

Persons: Spaeny, “ Priscilla, ”, It’s, Hannah, Priscilla, Priscilla Presley, Priscilla ”, Sofia Coppola, ” “, it’s, leashes, I’d, Justin Bieber Organizations: tote, telegraphs, Los Angeles Dodgers, American Locations: rhinestones, New York, Brooklyn, New, L.A

☆ Running for Our Lives
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-21 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The obvious answer is that we run to be healthy, to improve our cardiovascular systems and our moods, to become fitter and stronger. But sometimes it feels like the real reason that I run is to get better at running. But running in particular seems intricately linked to questions of endurance, of grit and commitment and even moral rectitude. “Running is more than a sport or a form of exercise, a passion or a pastime. I started running because I wanted to reclaim the practice from my elementary school days, when the Presidential Fitness Test — and its crowning glory, the mile run — was accepted as a meaningful measure of a child’s worth.

Persons: We’ve, it’s Organizations: American College of Cardiology

☆ The National Book Awards Longlist
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-16 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever received was a stack of four or five books, all published the year I was born. I hadn’t read John le Carré’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” but now I felt a connection to it; we’d both come into being at roughly the same time. The all-you-can-read buffet of books available begs a reader, especially a slow reader like me, to develop a strategy. This week, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2023 National Book Awards, presenting a crop of books on which a hungry reader could happily feast from now through the end of the year. (“Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and “Fire Weather,” by John Vaillant just moved to the top of my list.)

Persons: I’ve, John le Carré’s, ”, Ursula K, Le Guin, I’m, ’, Nana Kwame Adjei, John Vaillant Organizations: Book Foundation

☆ Your Fall Movie Preview
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-09 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Searching for something to look forward to in the last light of summer, the fall movie schedule beckons. When the sun sets too early, what better refuge than the movies, where Annette Bening is playing Diana Nyad (October), Colman Domingo plays Bayard Rustin (November) and Timothée Chalamet is Willy Wonka (December)? Some studios pushed their big theatrical releases to 2024 while the ongoing actors’ strike prevents stars from promoting films. Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway and Marisa Tomei star in Rebecca Miller’s romantic comedy “She Came to Me,” about a composer who’s having trouble composing. That one’s set in my neighborhood, so I’m presold on it.

Persons: Annette Bening, Diana Nyad, Colman Domingo, Bayard Rustin, Chalamet, Willy Wonka, I’m, “ Dicks, ”, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Larry Charles, Kristen Roupenian’s, Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway, Marisa Tomei, Rebecca Miller’s, who’s

☆ Summer’s Not Over Yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-02 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This weekend, while you’re working the grill or attending a parade or sitting in traffic, conversation will turn, inevitably, to the end of summer. Labor Day, nominally a holiday celebrating the industriousness of the American worker, also serves to remind the worker that they haven’t been quite as industrious as they might have been these past three months. In his eulogy for summer’s lazy days in The Times today, my colleague Stephen Kurutz mourns the vestiges of truly unmonitored working from home that this fall seems to augur: “Will we forget the small pleasure of sitting on a porch and looking at the yard?” he writes. Of trading the daily commute for an aimless drive?”Why must there be such an austere demarcation between before Labor Day and after, between summer and not-summer, between enjoying our lives and enduring them? Why have we so internalized the back-to-school dread of childhood that it’s become a permanent feature of adulthood?

Persons: You’ll, Stephen Kurutz, it’s Organizations: Labor, The Times Locations: The

☆ Can Errands Be Enjoyable Exercise?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

We’re on again off again, depending on the latest study (10,000? When I’ve missed a run or skipped leg day, I’m much more attentive to my step count. Before you remind me that I do not need any more stuff, I will tell you I was there really just out of curiosity. Biking 11 miles to and from Costco with a trailer of groceries, as Andrew Leonard has been doing since his car broke down three years ago? Leonard has found errand-running to be his ideal form of exercise: a healthy routine that’s intrinsically motivated by his love of cycling and his love of getting things done.

Persons: I’ve, it’s, I’d, Andrew Leonard, Leonard Organizations: Costco Locations: New York City

☆ The Post-Vacation Clarity
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-19 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If you’re lucky, you might get out of your home and your head, take some time off and away. ), as I was recently, with that post-vacation clarity, whereby the excesses of one’s everyday life seem gaudy, nearly intolerable. A week spent living out of a suitcase and the concept of owning more than one sweatshirt seems silly. It’s not the stuff itself — having enough stuff is a privilege — but the complications that accompany the stuff. You spend time in a new environment, on a different schedule, maybe eating different things, trying on other ways of living.

☆ The Dave Matthews Band, Reconsidered
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-29 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Dave Matthews Band is on tour, as they have been every summer, except 2020, for the past 30-odd years. Like the Grateful Dead and Phish, so-called jam bands with which it’s often lumped together, Dave Matthews has a deliriously passionate fan base that follows the band from city to city, reuniting with fellow disciples at preshow tailgates, showing off devotional tattoos, trading live recordings. In the early ’90s, when I arrived for my first year at the University of Virginia, Dave Matthews was a local celebrity. It would be years before the stereotype of Dave Matthews fans as “pot-smoking, tie-dye-touting former frat bros fawning over craft beers in parking lots between cornhole games,” as Perri Ormont Blumberg puts it, would become a widely understood social designation. We spent the next four years not going to Dave Matthews Band shows together.

Persons: Dave Matthews, preshow, ”, Perri Ormont Blumberg, ” Ben Sisario Organizations: University of Virginia, The Times Locations: Virginia

☆ Welcome to Barbenheimer Weekend
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-22 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Start the day with the darker fare: Christopher Nolan’s moody “Oppenheimer,” about the physicist who ran the Los Alamos Laboratory during the development of the atomic bomb. The movie industry hopes so. Ticket sales for the year in the U.S. and Canada are down about 20 percent from the same period in 2019. Analysts predict that “Barbie” could take in $100 million domestically through Sunday; “Oppenheimer” around $50 million. “These are not the tried-and-true safe bets that are the hallmark of the summer movie season,” he said.

Persons: Christopher Nolan’s, Oppenheimer, ”, Milk, Greta Gerwig’s “, fantasia, ” “ Barbie, ” “ Barbie ”, “ Oppenheimer, “, ‘ Oppenheimer, Barbie ’, Will Barbenheimer, Barbie ”, Paul Dergarabedian Organizations: Los Alamos Laboratory, Alamo, Times Locations: Chicago, U.S, Canada

☆ Reconsidering the Staycation
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-15 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | More About Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’ve always been skeptical of the staycation. So I was intrigued to discover, thanks to my colleague Catherine Pearson, that I have been staycationing all wrong. Evidently, my tendency to stumble into time off without a plan is unlikely to produce a restorative effect. This weekend, you could, for instance, seek out some vegan ice cream that doesn’t taste terrible. You could try running in a pool, which is easier on the joints but as effective as running on land.

Persons: I’ve, van, Catherine Pearson, Jaime Kurtz, “, ”, we’re Organizations: James Madison University

☆ ‘The Bear’ and a Chaotic Vision of Work
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-02 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Business leaders are resorting to desperate measures to entice workers back to the office, my colleague Emma Goldberg reported recently. “It’s been three years of scattershot plans for returning to in-person work — summoning people in, not really meaning it, everybody pretty much working wherever they pleased,” she wrote. One idea I haven’t seen floated is to offer screenings of the series “The Bear,” whose second season was released in June on Hulu. When it debuted last year, “The Bear” was praised for its authenticity, for depicting the chaos of a real restaurant kitchen. Hands are burned, fingers slashed; the pace of the prep rush turns the kitchen staff into sweating, shouting bodies, meat cooking meat.” Hardly a convincing argument for in-person work.

Persons: Emma Goldberg, “ It’s, ”, “, Will inducements, Salesforce, James Beard, ” James Poniewozik, begrudgingly Organizations: Hulu, The Locations: Chicagoland, The Times, The

☆ Your Intentions for the Summer
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-17 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The message was perfunctory, left by the shop owner, a usually grumpy guy who sounded like his usually grumpy self. I’ve come to interpret it as, “Whatever amount of time is before you, enjoy it, and don’t take it for granted.”So I’m planning an “Enjoy Your Time” summer. I asked you recently what sort of personal summer “brand” you might declare, what this will be “the summer of” for you. I hope they make you think a little more creatively about the possibilities for your own summer:Your summer plansIt’s the summer of Frosty Fridays, where I take my three kids out to a new ice cream shop each Friday. — Pete Horvath, ChicagoThis is #granolagrandma summer.

Persons: ”, I’ve, — Pete Horvath, — Katherine Knight Organizations: “ Locations: ”, Chicago, Knoxville, Tenn

☆ What Will Be the Theme of Summer?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I proclaim this: the Summer of George!”Setting intentions for summer is the low-stress, seasonal version of a New Year’s resolution. Megan Thee Stallion ushered in the notion of the “Hot Girl Summer” with her 2019 song, which led to the hopeful but mostly unrealized “hot vax summer” of 2021. Any eccentric pattern can become a designation: “‘Sharknado,’ Cronut … Is This the Summer of the Neolexic Portmanteau?” Slate asked in 2013. Hayley Phelan instructed Times readers on ways to make the summer of 2018 the summer of missing out, introducing the concept of JOMO (J for joy), FOMO’s “benevolent cousin.”In branding summer, we relinquish some of the season’s intoxicating agency: Is it caftan summer? My friend Sarah claims she’s observing an “I’m not showering” summer.

Persons: Seinfeld ”, George, he’s, ”, frivolously, Megan Thee, Nature, Callie Holtermann, Slate, Hayley Phelan, Natalie, Sarah, she’s Organizations: Yankees, The Times Locations: Bay

☆ The Cannes Film Festival
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The Cannes Film Festival began this week with Maïwenn’s “Jeanne du Barry,” starring Johnny Depp as Louis XV, and ends on May 27 with a new Pixar film, “Elemental.” In between, there will be many screenings, many awkward standing ovations, many awards bestowed. Wes Anderson also has a new one, “Asteroid City,” about a junior stargazing convention. It features many members of the Andersonian repertory — Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody and others. In “Firebrand,” from the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz, Alicia Vikander plays Catherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII, who’s played by Jude Law. Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose film “Shoplifters” won the Palme d’Or in 2018, has a new film, “Monster.” It stars Sakura Ando from “Shoplifters,” and the composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died last month, did the score.

☆ What’s in Our Queue? ‘I Hate Suzie’ and More
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

What’s in Our Queue? ‘I Hate Suzie’ and MoreI’m the deputy editor of the Culture & Lifestyle department at The Times, and I write the Morning newsletter on Saturdays. Here are five things I’ve been watching, reading and listening to →

Persons: Suzie ’, I’ve Organizations: &, The Times

☆ It’s Coronation Day
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Melissa Kirsch | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But as with a sports playoff game or Hollywood awards ceremony, the coronation of Charles III has made me into an instant, if temporary, royals superfan. In a recent poll of 3,070 adults in Britain, 64 percent of respondents said they had little to no interest in today’s coronation. The ceremony has been modified to be more inclusive, but still “the hoary rituals of the coronation are a reminder of how — in a secular, multiethnic, digital-age society — the crown is fundamentally an anachronism,” wrote The Times’s London bureau chief, Mark Landler. An over-the-top coronation for a new king does make for an incongruous viewing experience while Commonwealth nations call for Britain to redress its colonialist legacy and the country reckons with a cost-of-living crisis. It’s possible to be fascinated by the pageantry while remaining skeptical of it, to gawk at the fairy-tale elements of the coronation while still questioning the system that supports them.

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