By Laurence Lerman / New York City Ari Aster’s new movie Beau Is Afraid is a nutty one—a strangely funny, sometimes creepy and really weird black comedy that can loosely be described as being about an uptight guy with serious mommy issues. In other words, another tricky-to-classify, genre-stretching slice of contemporary cinema from the New York City-born writer/director whose first couple of films proved to be among the finest one-two debut punches of the past decade. I’m speaking of the uniquely stylized terror tales Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), both of which developed a sizable fan base for their maker. Hereditary, with its powerful story of a grieving family and the subsequent tragedies they endure; and Midsommar’s tale of troubled young American couple in Sweden who find themselves at the mercy of a Scandinavian pagan cult, served as Aster’s calling card to an audience looking for a little arthouse sensibility in their horror. They both remain unnerving (even after multiple viewings). Aster’s committed fans began the buzz for Beau back in the winter of 2021 when distributor A24 first announced the movie (then titled Disappointment Blvd.) and that Joaquin Phoenix was on board to star as its fearful and paranoid title character. The film arrived with a memorable off-the-record April 1 “premiere” at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn with a Q&A moderated by actor Emma Stone. The show was actually part of an April Fools’ Day surprise screening for an audience that thought they were sitting down to watch a director’s cut of Midsommar. Now that’s some fun fan service! Beau Is Afraid officially opened on April 14 with a limited release at four locations in New York and Los Angeles. The results were a number of sold-out shows on both coasts, some very positive critical and audience response, and a healthy opening weekend gross of $320,000. After expanding from four screens to 965 the following week, the film rang up another $2.7 million in its second weekend. It leveled off in its third weekend, bringing in $1.2 million for a total domestic box office take of $4.2 million. Beau is the latest movie from A24, who released Aster’s previous two films before really hitting the jackpot with this year’s smash hit Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. Beau Is Afraid’s story follows the travails of the extremely anxious Beau Wasserman, the middle-aged son of a wealthy and ferocious mother named Mona, who’s brought to uproarious, regal life by the inimitable Patti Lupone. Setting out on a trek from his sad, squalid apartment in a nameless, crime-ridden city to his mother’s sprawling estate, Beau endures all manner of strange, silly and menacing encounters with everyone from a shell-shocked former solider and an experimental theater troupe to his former teenage crush and a suburban couple who manage to kidnap him. Along his episodic way from the city to the suburbs to a forest and beyond, there’s room for a delightfully colorful animated sequence, a running gag about Beau’s testicles, a handful of flashbacks and dreams, and one of the wackiest sex scenes I’ve seen in a long time. Clocking in at an imposing three hours, Aster’s latest takes some really funny and out-there ideas and shakes them all up with a wraparound feeling of danger and chaos. But though Phoenix’s Beau does indeed come off as being very, very afraid, the film that bears his character’s name isn’t nearly as unsettling as Aster’s first two films. Then again, just as Hereditary and Midsommar didn’t traffic in traditional horror tropes or jump-scares, neither does the often hilarious Beau Is Afraid offer much in the way of belly laughs or sudden snickers. The humor is more about the sight-gag-filled situations that envelope Beau with their surrealness and excess. Aster also appears to be leaning into his Jewish heritage with this film, which he described in a behind-the-scenes promo clip as being “like a Jewish Lord of the Rings, but he’s just going to his mom’s house.” (In a recent interview on Collider.com, co-star Nathan Lane actually described the movie as” a Jewish Everything Everywhere All at Once.”) I can go with the Lord of the Rings comparison and, yes, Beau could be considered Frodo-esque, but the beloved Hobbit didn’t exhibit the kind of guilt that courses through the Beau’s veins over the course of his crazed and occasionally supernatural odyssey. “Guilt? Isn’t that just a huge part of life?, Aster said in a New York Times interview of that familiar feeling known to rise between a Jewish son and his mother. “For me, the film is like a big Jewish comedy, and that’s the first thing to go in the pot.” The supporting cast, filled with Jews and non-Jews alike, rises to the occasion to bring on the guilt. Aster has smartly filled Beau with a number of idiosyncratic players to bounce off the increasingly unhinged Phoenix. The latter delivers one of his most eccentric performances (which is saying a lot because we’re talking about Joaquin Phoenix, here!). Particularly potent (and peculiar) are sequences featuring Lane, Parker Posey, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Zoe Lister-Jones and Stephen McKinley Henderson. Beau Is Afraid does hit some occasionally dry patches while traversing the peaks and valleys of Beau’s overstuffed journey, which begins to grow enervating by the final hour. But there’s always something look at or hold on to over the course of the jaunt, along the hope of a payoff. There is. And it’s kinda scary. And pretty funny, too. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Naomi Serviss / New York City When I was 10, my mother’s bingo buddy called me “pleasantly plump.” I knew an insult when I heard it. In retrospect, that cringy phrase may have been lobbed without malice, but it sure stung a preteen’s self-confidence. In that moment I became self-aware, and thus was my body dysmorphia launched. But I’m not alone. Women (and girls) have been brainwashed into thinking the only body worth inhabiting is a thin one. We know this has been going on for generations. Blame mass media, commercials, television, movies, Hollywood, Fox, magazines, fashion designers, and the ubiquitous Kardashians. No one gets off with a pass. Not even ourselves. And especially not our mothers! There have always been amphetamines, SlimFast, Ayds diet chews, grapefruit and Atkins diets galore. Pick your poison. Which is why it’s been no surprise that the popularity of Ozempic, a new diabetes medication, has been proliferating like drunk bunnies. The drug often results in rapid weight loss. The word got out and the celebrity-obsessed had something else to wonder about. “Does she or doesn’t she?” has a whole new meaning now than when it referred (in the ‘50s) to a Clairol hair dye commercial. Ozempic, manufactured by Novo Nordisk, is part of a class of drugs geared towards treating diabetes and obesity. It’s been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Type 2 diabetes only and has been available since 2017. Another new drug on the rapid weight loss bandwagon is Wegovy, which allows a higher maximum dose of semaglutide, Ozempic’s active ingredient, and targets obesity. How successful and widespread has this phenomenon been? Last year, Novo Nordisk cited a 50 percent worldwide market growth. Almost 40,000 Wegovy prescriptions are written every week. Are these drugs safe? Are there side effects? Are they worth it? According to a recent New Yorker article (March 27), complications can include diarrhea, constipation, nausea, vomiting and/or dizziness. The stomach distress can be so debilitating it has sent folks to the ER. “Ozempic face” is now a thing: a gaunt, unhealthy, sallow-cheeked visage. Usually caused by rapid weight loss. And adding to the bad news, insurance companies are unlikely to cover the meds. The cost is often more than a $1,000 a month. TikTok should also take partial blame for the so-called designer drug craze. Some people flaunt and post and make snap-fast weight loss cheerful and goal-worthy. Why not try it? The gaunt look is in again! We’re obsessed with our perceived imperfections, when they merely make us more human! Just when I thought self-acceptance was the mantra du jour, Ozempic seeped into the nomenclature. It cross-pollinated among Hollywood celebs whose narcissistic lives revolve around the scale and arm weights. What about this 31-year-old woman from Manhattan? (who chose to remain anonymous) who tried Ozempic? She gained 20 pounds in 2018. With diabetes and obesity running in her family, she was concerned about following down that path. Taking the advice of her general practitioner, she consulted with an endocrinologist to rule out thyroid disease. Her thyroid was normal, but she was urged to lose weight. "My weight has never bothered me emotionally, but always in the back of my mind worried about diabetes I tried diet medications for an incentive to lose more on my own," she says Her Ozempic journey began in December 2021. "I was on it for two months and then my insurance stopped covering it," she says. Her co-pay was $15. Adding insult to injury, she neither lost nor gained weight She's resolved to end her Ozempic journey on an upbeat note . "I'm happy to be done with it and am pregnant now. I wouldn't want to be on diet medication anyway," she added. The weight she lost hasn't crept back. Being thin is no longer a goal. "I feel fine about myself again. I believe all bodies are beautiful and society sucks when it comes to fatphobia." One of the many celebrities rumored to have taken one of the rapid weight-loss drugs is Mindy Kaling. Says the Ozempic veteran, "I WORSHIP Mindy Kaling. I don't care how she lost the weight or why, " "People will say horrible things if she didn't lose weight and say awful things now that she has," "There's no winning when you're overweight." Or pleasantly plump. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

By Lydia Hope Wilen / New York City The extent of my father’s imbibing was drinking a little Manischewitz wine during a family holiday meal, then sleeping it off on a couch until my mother nudged him, “Jack, it’s time to go home.” And in the summertime, my father would have my mother buy him a couple of bottles of beer…the least expensive brand for the ale aficionado. One summer evening, my father asked 8-year-old me to get him a beer out of the refrigerator. I said, “Which one? Shakespeare?” My father, mother and sister laughed aloud. That did it! I was hooked. Making people laugh was thrilling. I wanted to keep doing that. And I did. I wrote humorous essays in school, funny poems for all occasions. I wrote comedy material for comedian Jackie Mason and clever one-liners for celebrities on producer Bob Stewart’s TV game shows. Soon, I was asked to audition as a writer for a show called Off the Wall starring Ann Meara. My audition consisted of writing a blackout–a joke in rapid-fire slapstick style that goes back to vaudeville when the lights were quickly turned off after the punchline of a joke to accentuate it and to give the audience time to take it all in and laugh. (That explanation is longer than a blackout.) This was my audition piece: A hotel room where the maid is yelling at the bed. “No! Never! Not with you. Not in a million years.” In walks the room’s occupant, who asks the maid, “What are you doing?” The maid answers, “I’m turning down your bed.” BLACKOUT Bob Stewart hired me on the spot as Head Writer. Two days later, Stewart had a disagreement with the Executive Producer and both of us were fired. That’s show biz and no laughing matter. Writing comedy material is a thoughtful process, but ad-libbing a funny line takes guts. You don’t have time to plan it or to censor yourself. You just blurt it out in the spur of the moment. You also don’t know if it will be well-received, appreciated or get the sought-after laugh. It may be one of those times when you have to explain yourself by saying, “I’m kidding. I’m only kidding.” I choose to risk making a fool of myself rather than risk missing the opportunity to made someone laugh. It hasn’t always worked out in my favor. Here are some recent embarrassing examples: I’ve used The UPS Store down the block from me many times through the years. I go in and hand the envelope or package to the clerk. The clerk puts it on the scale and asks for my phone number. I give the clerk my number and it’s typed into the system, enabling a UPS label to be created and setting up the emailed confirmation and tracking information to be sent to me. The last time I went in with my tax papers in an envelope, I handed it to a young, attractive clerk. He was a new hire. He asked for my phone number. After I gave it to him, I said, “It’s been a while since a good-looking guy asked me for my telephone number!” He quickly and nervously set me straight, “Oh no. That’s not why… I need your number for our records.” I was embarrassed that he thought I actually meant what he thought I meant. “Oh, no. I’m kidding. I’m only kidding.” At that instant, I wanted to UPS myself home. Another example: My building’s pandemic policy is if you want to take an elevator and someone is already in the elevator, you must ask if it’s okay to join the already-inside rider. I was in the elevator, wearing a mask. As the elevator door was closing, a man put his hand out, causing the door to reopen. He saw me in the corner of the elevator and asked if I would mind if he and his wife and child rode with me. I said, “No. I don’t mind.” They came in and as the door was closing, I said, “Just don’t hug me.” I thought that was a funny thing to say to these strangers. From their reaction, they thought it was creepy. If the elevator door hadn’t closed, I think they would have jumped out. Another example (some people never learn): The mailroom in my building has a few bookcases filled with books that residents have left for others to read and then put back on the shelves. One evening, I was checking the shelves and an on-in-years man got his mail and then, he too, started looking at the books. When he passed by me to get to another section of the shelves, something grazed my hip. I looked over at him and saw something I had not seen in years. I asked him, “Is that a telephoto camera lens…or are you just happy to see me?” I couldn’t help myself. The man was old enough to know the line was originally made famous by Mae West and changed slightly through the years to, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” The man didn’t get it. For a minute I thought, maybe he doesn’t understand English. And then he said, “Yes. I use the lens to take close-ups of birds in the park.” By then, I knew better than to make any bird jokes. A long-ago example of one of my under-duress yet funniest non-appreciated lines: I was in my early 30s. I woke up on a Sunday morning and I was hemorrhaging. No joke. It was scary. I called my primary doctor. She said she’d call a gynecologist she knew and have him meet me at his office. He was there by the time I arrived. His nurse was also there and she helped me out of my bloodied clothes and into a hospital gown. As soon as I was stretched out on the examining table with my feet in the stirrups, the, yes, young and attractive doctor approached. Now, with the major amount of blood coming out of me, you would think that with the doctor spreading my legs and reaching in, I’d make a joke about the parting of the Red Sea. But no. Instead, when he leaned over with his fingers inside me and his face about seven inches over my face, I said to him the then-popular pickup line, “Come here often?” I heard a stifled laugh from the nurse in the corner of the room…but nothing from the doctor. When the exam ended, he said to the nurse, in front of me, “I never saw anything like this”. Not exactly a confidence builder. He gave me pills that he said would stop the bleeding and told me to forget being a vegetarian and eat some liver. The pills did stop the bleeding and I did eat some liver…with fava beans and a nice Chianti. I’m kidding. I’m only kidding. P.S. I had a podiatrist appointment today with a doctor I’ve never met before. Dr. Rosanna Troia was every wonderful thing a doctor should be. Towards the end of my visit, I told her that she more than lived up to the many rave reviews she got online. She thanked me and said, “My mother was so tired after writing so many!” Even though I laughed, Dr. Troia said, “I’m kidding. I’m only kidding.” I ask you, readers, what are the chances of that happening the day I turned in this story? Lydia Hope Wilen had a successful collaboration with her late sister Joany as nonfiction bestselling authors (18 books), journalists, TV personalities, writers and talent coordinators on a Nickelodeon series hosted by Leonard Nimoy, Reading Rainbow episodes, skit writers for Dr. Ruth's TV show, Diet America Challenge on CBS, and writers of screenplays (optioned but not produced yet). Lydia is writing on her own now and has just completed an extraordinary book for young people and their parents. It will have them laughing and learning...once she gets an agent and it gets published.

By John Woodford / Ann Arbor, Mich. Spoiler alert: There will be no spoilers in this review of Every Man a King, because I find detective fiction not worth reading when spoiled. Writers of detective fiction tend not to like being measured against Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler every time they publish in the gumshoe genre. And I’m assuming that’s the case with the prolific Walter Mosley. But I’m afraid such comparisons can’t be helped, especially when the writer is a fount of the dazzling and delicious imagery that delights readers of this genre in patterns set by those pioneers. Some random examples from Mosley in his new book: Tall, she was maybe thirty-three looking twenty-six, dark-skinned with a face that was the shape of an inverted egg. Mathilda Prim’s figure was reminiscent of a Playboy bunny of the late sixties—opulent, impossible. The only serious furniture was a big oak desk that sat rather high and unevenly, reminding me of a bull intent on a tuft of tasty grass and at the same time wondering if it should gore someone. That day the big, big man wore a three-piece maroon suit with a pale blue dress shirt and a tie that seemed to be derived from the colors of the dark rainbow that adorns a shallow oil slick. In spite of appearances, the majesty of nature is just a fancy blanket draped over the malevolence of the creatures of earth. She had a smile that was something to behold. It felt as if I had been walking on a paved road that gave way to pounded earth that then became a less-trodden path through a wood. There I came upon a peasant woman tilling the soil with a huge hoe made from the horn of some beast of burden. That path could have been anywhere in the world. And that woman was the reason there’s life anywhere. She was both a fortress wall and the only home anyone would ever need. All of that in a smile. Such verbal pleasures, if the reader is looking for an enjoyable diversion rather than a masterpiece, furnish the strongest reasons I can muster for recommending this novel, for the sum of its parts are greater than the whole. Mosley has published 15 novels in his Easy Rawlins series, six with Leonid McGill as protagonist. Every Man a King is the second with Joe King Oliver doing the sleuthing. Oliver is a former New York city cop who was framed and jailed in his introductory appearance in 2018’s Down the River Unto the Sea. Now he’s out and working as a private investigator. A multibillionaire, Roger Ferris, has hired Oliver to check on the information surrounding the kidnapping, forcible repatriation and jailing of a “natural-born genius” named Alfred Xavier Quiller. Quiller has become a “poster boy for the Men of Action and other like-minded alt-right organizations.” Ferris suspects him of having information that is damaging to the U.S. government and to Ferris himself, so he sends Oliver to interrogate Quiller in prison. That’s the main case of the two embroiling Oliver. The other involves his ex-wife’s second husband, who has been jailed and accused of a diesel oil scam involving the Russian government, Russian gangsters or both. As Oliver pursues both cases, he interacts with so many characters with so many bizarre names and aliases that the diligent reader will need to fashion some sort of scorecard to keep track of them. You’ve met Mathilda Prim of the Playboy contours; here are some, but hardly all, of the other role-players: Minta Kraft (aka Gloriana Q), Forthright Jorgensen, Coleman Tesserat, Tava Burkel, Rembert Cormody,, d’Artagnan Aramois, Amethyst Banks, Gladstone Palmer, Oliya Ruez, Augustine Antrobus, Yuri Fleganov, Mookie and Loopy Hill, Delphine du Champs, Bexleigh Terrell, Sola Prendergast, and Cassandra Ferris-Brathwaite. Mosley loads the Ferris-Quiller case with political and social significance and embellishes it with musings arising from Mosley’s deep knowledge of political theory. The rather skimpy secondary plot, involving his ex-wife’s feckless new husband, serves mainly as a channel for the author’s gift for satire, which he does not overdo. Fairly regularly, the septuagenarian author intrudes on the consciousness of his 40-year-old narrator/hero, permitting Joe King Oliver to be both older-and-wiser than your average private dick in some scenes while in others he’s artful in various modes of combat and irresistible to women, even upon brief acquaintance, as those alter egos of the Hammett-Chandler line of novelists tend to be. As for the Hammett-Chandler standard: This novel is not up to their snuff. I’d say the socioeconomic and cultural context in Every Man is more fanciful than gritty, the villainy reported and debated more than shown, the excitement and suspense sparse and not altogether convincing. But the novel did raise extratextual mysteries I enjoyed pursing. First, what’s the significance of the title echoing a slogan of the Louisiana 1930s populist Huey Long? We never learn the connection. Perhaps it’s a pun implying that Joe King Oliver is something of an Everyman. And then, for me, there was the juiciest mystery of all: When Oliver confronts Quiller, who is, according to the billionaire who hired Oliver, “a misogynist, a racist, a thief and an elitist of the highest order,” and a “betray[er] of our civil rights” to boot, Quiller says: “I’m a patriot; a white man in a white land where, one might say, too many shades clutter the landscape.” To which Oliver replies: “That’s a bastardization of Ezra Pound…He was likely a genius but more crazy than smart.” What was the original quotation? I wondered. I followed many Internet leads. I read snippets of numerous poems by Pound in hope of tracing the allusion. I asked a poet friend of mine who is a Pound expert if she had any clues. She hunted, too, but, like me, came up with nothing. Maybe one of you readers out there can crack this case for me. I’d be much obliged. John Woodford lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he retired after two decades as the executive editor of Michigan Today, a University of Michigan alumni/ae publication. His career in journalism includes editing and/or reporting duties for Ebony magazine, Muhammad Speaks newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New Haven Register, the New York Times and Ford Motor company publications.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. One of life’s great ironies, in my humble opinion: Conservatives creating the world’s largest, richest, most powerful and brazen manure factory after complaining for decades that the mainstream/liberal media slants or ignores the truth. Fox News, the crown jewel of the conservative media colossus that sprouted in the late 1980s with talk show firebrand Rush Limbaugh leading the way, was launched on October 7, 1996. It quickly became America’s most-watched cable news network (prime-time audience 2.2 million) with the sidesplitting slogan “Fair and Balanced.” Now, all media outlets regardless of their format and political leanings are biased to a greater or lesser degree. Perception, point of view and priorities are baked into anything we write or discuss. It’s no secret that audiences are carefully monitored for what attracts their interest as well as subscription and advertising dollars. This is a business, after all. Right-wing media has reliably presented its side of stories and issues while conveniently omitting rather significant facts or developments that undermine its preferred narratives. It also greatly embellishes the cases it hopes to make. The January 6 insurrection is one example. But if the recent defamation lawsuit settlement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems underscored anything, it’s that conservatives have zealously embraced the lucrative, politically expedient wonders of bull crap and will not pay any significant price for doing so while wreaking havoc on America’s democracy. The “gotcha at last!” moment that many people had long hoped for did not materialize with the settlement on April 18. There will be no squirming on the stand for star commentators Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. No on-air apologies. There has been barely a mention on Fox or in Chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post newspaper. Dominion got half of the $1.6 billion it sought after Fox persistently and willfully spread bogus claims that Dominion machines had rigged the 202o presidential election against Donald Trump. For Fox, a company with $12 billion in annual revenue, $787.5 million is sofa change. And lest we forget, Murdoch’s personal fortune weighs in at a modest $17.4 billion. As long as Fox remains faithful to Trump’s base by giving it what it wants to hear (nary a discouraging but not necessarily true word about the MAGA cause), the dough will continue to flow, though there may be a crimp in the pipeline due to Carlson's sudden departure on April 24. However, these Fox viewers don’t sound too perturbed that their chosen media admittedly lies to them. Even with more than a dozen other defamation suits pending, including one against Fox for $2.7 billion by voting machine company Smartmatic, conservative media will no sooner adopt journalistic ethics than Trump will see the inside of a prison. (House arrest at Mar-a-Lago is about as bad as it will get.) And Fox will continue to peddle cow pies. Heck, Alex Jones’ unconscionable Infowars website and talk show continue to spew despite his declaration of bankruptcy after being sued by the families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims tormented by his falsehoods about them. Now that the GOP and its media allies have shed their last shreds of shame and conscience, all that is left for them to do is be more circumspect about what they say, especially in internal communications of the kind that left Fox with its trousers down after discoveries and court filings in the Dominion lawsuit. The cold reality: The radical right knows full well that bald lies and blatant hypocrisy are useful tools for achieving its political agenda and keeping its base and media audience in thrall. It sees its battle against liberalism and progressivism as an all-out existential war, and all is fair in war, particularly deception such as Trump’s “fake electors” scheme to overturn the 2020 election. Bushwah brings in the long green, too. "The problem is that we have an information ecosystem where it is profitable for some people to sell lies. And defamation law can only do so much about that," Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, told NPR. "Partly, you've got to look at the supply side for this information. I think you have to look at the demand side. To what extent are we going out there and consuming false information willingly because it's more pleasurable to us than true information would be?" If you’re in need of an irony supplement, consider that touchy right-wing politicians are now trying to weaken libel and defamation protections for media who dare run unflattering stories about them. That effort could easily come back to bite Fox and its ilk on its ample posterior, but as it is, suing is simple now for well-endowed entities. "It's really pretty easy to bring a defamation action if you're rich and powerful,” Lidsky told NPR. “Any time you come in for sharp criticism and it's not necessarily easy to win, but you can inflict a lot of pain on another individual just by suing them. You have to be careful that defamation isn't used as a tool to suppress free speech and criticism, particularly criticism of government officials." Some folks have hailed the Dominion settlement, saying it “solidified” a shared vision of national facts about the 2020 election. Don’t make me laugh, my lips are chapped. Trump and his followers are still spouting lies that the election was stolen and they will surely continue right through the next election. Not having to apologize or admit wrongdoing makes it easy for Fox to act like the settlement was no big deal and other right-wing media to portray it as that old standby, “fake news.” This Golden Age of Gilded Hogwash won’t start winding down until Trump goes belly up. Even then, it’s unlikely to end because a shared reality with liberals is anathema for modern conservatives, and when bushels of money are to be made in something like manure, good luck getting rid of it. If you don’t believe me, consider narcotics, fossil fuels and firearms. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. The catalogue of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s ethical improprieties—and likely legal malfeasance—are piling up. They include his refusal to recuse himself from cases in which his wife, Ginni Thomas has an interest, and his failure over decades to disclose and report the outrageously expensive gifts he received from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow. Among his many disclosure failures are Thomas’s mother living rent-free in a house he sold to a Crow-owned corporation, and his reporting that his wife had no income when she had earned six figures from the conservative Heritage Foundation. The nature of Clarence Thomas’s character was apparent at least as far back as 1981, when the Senate held his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. If the Senate had listened carefully to Anita Hill, who testified against him, they could have stopped the Justice’s corrupt career before it began. But they blew it. Justice Thomas’s Appointment to the Supreme Court President George H. W. Bush appointed Thomas—who had barely one year of judicial experience—to take the seat formerly occupied by the brilliant Justice Thurgood Marshall. The replacement of that legal giant, who was Black, with the inexperienced Thomas smacked of the Republican Party’s perversion of affirmative action--a tokenism that Clarence Thomas claims to hate. They picked a Black ultra-conservative, perhaps thinking that would make it harder for liberals to vote against him. Then law professor Anita Hill came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, detailing allegations of sexual harassment by Thomas in the workplace. Hill testified that while Thomas was her supervisor at two government agencies, he repeatedly asked her out, would not take no for an answer, and frequently talked to her about sex in graphic detail, describing pornography he’d seen of large-breasted women, women having sex with animals, group sex and rape scenes, as well as a reference to a pubic hair on a Coke can in his office. Assuming an air of aggrieved outrage, Thomas called the hearing “a circus,” and “a national disgrace.” He claimed that Hill’s accusations were playing into stereotypes of Black men and whined that, “As a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas. It is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order…you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.” The Senate Committee committed a high-tech lynching all right—but it was of the equally Black but female Anita Hill, not Clarence Thomas. Or perhaps what the all-white, all-male committee did would better be compared to a burning-at-the-stake. They forced Anita Hill to repeat over and over the most embarrassing parts of Thomas' alleged harassment. Republican Utah Senator Orrin Hatch asked whether she had read The Exorcist and although she said she had not, accused her of borrowing the pubic hair on a Coke can episode from that novel. Did no one think to ask whether Clarence Thomas had read The Exorcist and borrowed his reference to the pubic hair from it? To support the truth of her testimony, Hill even took and passed a lie-detector test. But to counter that, Republican Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson claimed that a delusional person could pass a polygraph test and read aloud a statement from an unidentified federal prosecutor suggesting that Hill could be delusional. Of course, Simpson failed to reveal that the federal prosecutor he quoted was a member of Judge Thomas’s defense team. Despite a Democratic majority in the Senate, Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48. Joe Biden was then a senator and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Years later, he publicly apologized to Anita Hill for failing to protect her from his fellow Senators’ inquisition. But the damage was already done. Justice Thomas’s Improprieties Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s most recent ethical improprieties have been the stuff of headlines. He refused to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election despite the fact his wife, Ginni Thomas, an ally of former President Donald Trump, pushed for the overturning of President Biden’s win. Thomas was also the lone dissenter in the Court’s 8-1 decision that emails and text messages from Trump allies concerning the January 6 insurrection—including some from Thomas’ wife—must be turned over to the Congressional January 6 committee. But Thomas’s numerous ethical improprieties have been ongoing over many decades. Under the Ethics in Government Act, Justice Thomas is a “judicial officer” required to disclose travel and other gifts on his annual financial disclosure report, including the source, description, and value of all gifts that exceed the reporting threshold (currently $415). The numerous expensive gifts from Thomas’s ultra-conservative billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow were far in excess of that reporting threshold. In its exemplary recent reportage, ProPublica reported that a single nine-day “island hopping” trip to Indonesia paid for by Crow--which included a flight on a private jet and a 162-foot superyacht, could have cost Thomas over $500,000 if he had paid for it himself. In addition, according to Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW), Justice Thomas and his wife accepted vacations almost every year from Mr. Crow at Topridge, Crow’s 105-acre luxury resort in the Adirondacks. There, Thomas was surrounded by guests with an ideology and agenda and opportunities to influence him. In addition, although Crow apparently does not have cases before the Court, he serves on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, which, according to its website, takes a strong interest in cases before the court. According to ProPublica, Justice Thomas sold three Georgia properties in 2014 to a Texas company owned by Crow. These properties included his mother’s house, in which she continues to live rent free—another gift to Thomas and his family. In addition, during a period when Ginni Thomas earned more than $686,000 from the conservative Heritage Foundation, Thomas checked a box on the required report labeled “none” for his wife’s income. He had done the same when she worked for conservative Hillsdale College. Thomas has claimed he misunderstood the reporting forms. But this magnitude of irregularities and omissions amount to lying about them. In defense of his handling of Harlan Crow’s gifts, Justice Thomas has claimed, “Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable.” This argument is ludicrous. It is highly unlikely that any responsible judicial colleague would have considered this to be non-reportable hospitality. As the New York Times put it, personal hospitality among close friends “would be a nice meal at a friend’s home, not an invitation to travel the world like royalty on a plutocrat’s dime.” Furthermore, according to ProPublica, Crow befriended Thomas after he became a Justice. As the Times suggests, under those circumstances, “it is hard to believe that if Justice Thomas started voting like Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the friendship or the free island hopping would continue.” Making the Court Ethical Again There currently is no written code of ethics to which the Supreme Court must adhere. Historically, it has been deemed unnecessary because it was assumed that anyone appointed to such a high legal position would have ethics beyond reproach. In 1969, when the liberal Justice Abe Fortas appeared to fail that test, he was forced to resign. Fortas had received $20,000 meant to be a yearly consulting fee from a foundation devoted to civil rights and religious freedom. But then the businessman who had started the foundation was convicted of securities violations. Fortas had quit the foundation in 1966 and returned all the money he had accepted. But the Republicans in Congress nevertheless demanded his resignation. The Democrats joined in the demand even though President Richard Nixon, a Republican, would appoint his successor. No Mitch McConnells among those Democrats. Fortas insisted he had done nothing wrong, but stepped down, stating in his resignation letter that “the welfare and the maximum effectiveness of the court to perform its critical role in our system of government are factors that are paramount to all others.” Justice Abe Fortas understood that even the appearance of impropriety could harm the Court’s legitimacy. The Republicans in the current Congress and on the Supreme Court have no such scruples. If Clarence Thomas ever does resign, I’m sure it will be done with his usual chip on the shoulder complaint that he is being “lynched” by liberals. But never mind Thomas’ likely whining. The Supreme Court’s ethical problems run deeper than one errant justice. According to the New York Times, Justice Antonin Scalia took 258 subsidized trips from 2004 to 2014. Scalia died at a West Texas hunting lodge where he was staying for free. The lodge was owned by a businessman whose company had recently had a case before the Court. Who knows what other justices are up to? And what exactly can be done to force Thomas or others on the court to behave in an ethical manner? Supreme Court justices can be impeached by a majority of the House and be tried in the Senate. But considering that the Republicans control the House, impeachment is not likely. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s chair, Illinois Democrat Dick Durban, has called on Chief Justice John Roberts to conduct an investigation of Thomas. But Roberts has already demonstrated his ethical hypocrisy by starting an investigation of the inconvenient leak to the public of Alito’s draft decision eviscerating Roe v. Wade while ignoring Alito’s own improper advance leak of the earlier Hobby Lobby decision to interested individuals. Senator Durbin has also said his committee will hold a hearing “regarding the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.” The Senator has invited Roberts, or a justice whom Roberts designates, to testify at the Committee’s hearing. At this point, the invitation is for a voluntary appearance. In the absence of California Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein (who is out indefinitely with shingles), Durbin does not have the needed committee majority to subpoena Roberts. It is unlikely, in any event, that Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Thomas would willingly testify or comply with a subpoena. Non-compliance with a subpoena would result in a separation-of-powers battle—eventually to be decided by the Supreme Court itself. It is doubtful that this Court would limit its own power. Congress could pass a law imposing a code of ethics on the Supreme Court. But even if one could obtain bipartisan support for it, given that the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land, it is unclear who could enforce it. Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has suggested that the U.S. Judicial Conference should refer Thomas to the Justice Department for potential violations of ethics laws. A DOJ investigation would require an attorney general with fortitude. It is questionable whether Attorney General Merrick Garland, who slow-walked action on former President Trump’s malfeasance, will have the stomach to take on a Thomas investigation. Given the current Republican Party’s love of power and lack of principle, the obstacles to establishing enforceable ethical rules for the Supreme Court are many and daunting. Perhaps a little McConnell-like maneuvering in the interest of justice is warranted. Maybe it’s time to add justices--to create a court majority that will agree to or itself institute ethical oversight. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Ben Leeds / Marist College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. For as long as I can remember, I have been a sports fanatic. This addiction undoubtedly comes from my dad. He loves playing and watching sports as well, and early on he wanted to use it as a way to bond with me. For my entire childhood, we watched games together, whether it be baseball, football, basketball, or hockey. My dad is a proud New York sports fan, who roots for the Yankees, Giants, Knicks, and Rangers. I take after him, rooting for all of the same teams. I maintained this love of sports as I grew up, knowing it would be something I wanted to further pursue with him, and as a career one day. In 2017, my dad came up with a bucket list for us, involving going to baseball games together. In MLB, there are 30 stadiums, with each team having its own. While he could have done this with any sport, baseball was the perfect choice for a few reasons. For one, the majority of the season takes place during the summer. This allowed us to go when the weather was warm, and I didn’t have to worry about missing school. Additionally, baseball is also the only sport where the dimensions of each field are different, based on the stadium. This makes for many distinctive features, unique to each park. There is also a historic aspect to the sport. Founded over 150 years ago, there are some parks that are over a hundred years old, including Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago. Over the years, we had been at a few stadiums near our home in Connecticut together. We had gone to both the Yankees and Mets parks, as well as the Baltimore Orioles’. With our new bucket list, we were excited to expand to new cities we otherwise would not visit. We had a lot of work to do, and we got started right away. While planning a family trip to Niagara Falls in the summer of 2017, my dad and I were quick to suggest a detour to Toronto to catch a ball game. My mom and my sister Sophie agreed, and on game day my dad and I got there when the gates opened, two hours early. We watched the teams warm up and explored the stadium as we waited for the game to begin. My mom and sister came at game time, and the four of us had a blast watching the game together. It was a fun experience, seeing a new park in a new city. My dad and I were hooked for more. Rather quickly, we went to all the parks within driving distance of our home. The rest of the parks required either a road trip or a plane ride. One of the most memorable ones was American Family Field, home of the Milwaukee Brewers. For my dad’s 50th birthday, his gift was a trip for him and me to fly to Wisconsin for a weekend. We went to a Brewers game on Saturday, then even went to a football game at the historic Lambeau Field on Sunday. In the summer of 2018, we were once again able to incorporate some parks into a family trip. On a vacation to Northern California, my dad and I crossed two more stadiums off our list, visiting the Colosseum in Oakland and Oracle Park in San Francisco. Our mission was going great; after about two years we had been to nine of 30 parks together, checking off nearly all of the nearby ones. Our first true road trip together came one summer later, where we visited PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Progressive Field in Cleveland. The trip generated a lot of fun memories beyond just new baseball stadiums. We saw a Yankees minor league game in Scranton, visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, and even had to check into a very rundown motel late one night somewhere in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. We were having awesome experiences together through these trips, exploring different parts of the United States. Before we could plan another trip together, though, the pandemic put a halt in our mission to travel the country. With no fans allowed in stadiums for the 2020 season and airports and travel being very iffy in 2021, we went two years with our plans on hold. After I graduated from high school in Trumbull, Conn in June, 2022, we were finally able to get back out there. We went on an amazing trip to the Midwest, seeing games in both Kansas City, Mo. and St. Louis. In Kansas City, we visited the Negro League Museum, a cool piece of baseball and American history. While in St. Louis, we went to see the famous Gateway Arch, which was truly an incredible sight to see. It was great to finally get back on the road with my dad after the pandemic had left us on pause for a little bit. Looking forward to the summer of 2023, we are already finalizing plans on our next trip, this one to Chicago. Like New York, Chicago has two separate teams, the White Sox and the Cubs. We are both excited to take a look at the city as well, including the famous Willis Tower (previously known as the Sears Tower), and “The Bean” sculpture. What started as a bucket list for just baseball stadiums, has turned into much more over the years. I have been so lucky to see different parts of the country I otherwise would not have, and to have done it with my dad. The trips have made us much closer, and it is definitely something I want to do when I have kids of my own someday. Last. April, I decided to attend Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. While some people struggle with choosing a major, my choice came easily due to my love of sports. I decided to major in communication, with a concentration in public relations and sports communication. For me, this was my best way to get involved professionally in the sports world. In my first few weeks at Marist, I was lucky enough to land a job on the school's event staff. I would attend the school's Division I games and do an array of tasks. I helped set up the venue before the game or cleaned it up after, ushered the stands, or even was the ball boy for some games. While the job did get me near the action, I wanted to get even more involved. This January, at the start of my second semester at Marist, I joined Center Field, Marist’s student-run online publication website for all things Marist sports. They were very welcoming to me, allowing me to write some stories just shortly after I joined. Overall, it has been a great experience discovering what journalism truly is like behind the scenes. I am very grateful for all of the awesome writers I have met so far at Center Field, and I am enjoying learning from them. Recently, I found out that as of this August, I will be on the website’s editorial board, which I am super-excited about. As my first year at Marist comes to a close, I am proud of all that I have accomplished. I have taken some important steps to further my career in sports, and I am excited to see what's in store for me going forward. Stay tuned, sports fans!

By Steve Cash / Detroit I am not sure if it is a coincidence or not, but since I turned 70 last May, I find myself looking the mirror quite a bit. Even though I’m trying to remain positive, there is no denying my rapid deterioration. My eyes, once considered attractive, now feature dark, puffy bags that look like I have gone five rounds with former heavy-weight champ Joe Frazier in his prime. Don't get me wrong–no one would ever have mistaken me for Paul Newman. But I always thought I had some sort of sex appeal. This misconception was initially set in motion by my friend Julie at my Bar Mitzvah. During a Sadie Hawkins dance (girl picks boy) Julie whispered in my ear how cute she thought I was. Julie was adorable and her proclamation enhanced my self-image tenfold. I was only 13 but her compliment lifted my self-esteem to a new level. It carried me through high school and into my early adult years. My overblown confidence regarding my looks served me well I dated several gorgeous girls and ended up marrying a beautiful woman. My wife was ten years younger than me when we married, which was very exciting at the time. Now that I’m 70, her youthful appearance only draws negative attention to my hasty decline. My wife has not been blind to these developments. She noticed these things and planned accordingly. She was way ahead of the Covid curve when, as the result of a lack of interest on her part, she instituted the six-foot distance rule on me long before the virus hit. My wife was always one up on my doctors too. When I had heart surgery, the doctor laid down some rules to follow for a quick recovery. I was not allowed to eat certain foods and not allowed to lift over 10 pounds. He was firm about no sex for six weeks. This rule proved to be superfluous given the every six-month sex schedule my wife had me on at the time. Later, when I went into surgery, my wife and I talked about the possibility of me not making it through the operation. Our kids were young and I insisted she remarry if the worst occurred. In a loving and sincere manner, my wife promised that she would never remarry. I was touched and brought to tears until she followed that with “I’ll just live with the guy." Although I have had many health problems through the years, my wife has a physical constitution second to none. She withstood three pregnancies without once getting sick, although she did complain of nausea during conception. My wife is also much stronger than I am mentally and far more intelligent. She once labeled me an “idiot savant.” I didn’t know the meaning, so I proceeded to look it up. The definition was a person who has great aptitude in one area but has trouble in other intellectual areas of function. My wife clarified her meaning by saying yes. I was an idiot savant, but she hadn't been able to identify the savant part yet. As I age, I find myself hanging around people who look a lot older than me, and purposely alienating and fighting with people who are in better shape than me. I use politics and religious differences as an excuse for our estrangement, but the truth is I am jealous that they are better preserved than I am. I’m no Romeo, but in my younger days I was no slouch in the bedroom. Well, as my looks have faded, I have to admit I’ve lost some of that confidence from long ago. I recently did something I am not proud of . This all started when my wife lost 20 pounds and as a joke I said to her,”if you lose 10 more I might get interested again. To my surprise, she replied, “If I lose 10 more pounds, who needs you?" Although she was kidding, I couldn't help feeling she was kidding on the emmes, Yiddish slang for kidding for real. This gave me pause. Was I no longer attractive to my wife? Was I no longer able to function? With my old insecurities back at the forefront, I’m ashamed to admit I contacted a lady of the night and set up a meeting. I was trying to see if I was still desirable, even if it were nothing more then a farce. I’m embarrassed to say I might have gone through with it except for some major confusion When I approached the young lady, she said “$100 for some hot sex.” Being suspicious by nature, I replied, "let me see the $100 first.” When I realized she was expecting me to pay her, I called the whole thing off. Trying to be a bit philosophical, I have decided to do my best to age gracefully and embrace the inevitable, accept the aging process and feel fortunate for the great times I’ve had, and look forward to the good ones yet to come. I did have one minor setback recently, though. I ran across a picture of Julie on Facebook. Unfortunately, she still looks great. Steve Cash is originally from Oak Park, Mich. He is a longtime real estate agent who used to do stand-up comedy in L.A. His claim to fame was winning The Gong Show in 1977, and working at the Comedy Store with such greats as David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Michael Keaton. After watching those brilliant comics perform, Steve realized he’d better make a beeline back to Detroit and get back into real estate. Steve has had articles published in a number of publications and enjoys writing and trying to make people laugh.

By Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area Is there a more quintessential vegetable for this time of year than asparagus? Just like spring onions and baby lettuce sprouting through the soil, I think asparagus provides a signature option for this season’s dining. On Passover and Easter tables, it often plays an important supporting role to the main course. It’s easy to prepare and offers a festive touch to a holiday meal. Asparagus has a noble pedigree. It was enjoyed by the ancient Greeks and Romans; in Rome, it was revered as a mystical plant and was offered up to the gods. I don’t really remember my first foray into eating asparagus. I know I wasn’t served it much as a kid, only in spring when it was readily available. As a matter of fact, during the ’50s and early ’60s, I don’t recall eating many fresh vegetables at all. Even though my mom cooked almost every night, the veggies seemed to come from the freezer. I think frozen and canned foods were all the rage. My kids should be grateful that they didn’t grow up in those decades, when we were subjected to flavorless and colorless canned peas that didn’t remotely resemble the real deal. In the early ’80s, my husband Bob and I bought a lovely house on a lake in Bloomfield Township, Mich. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the previous owner was an avid gardener. Actually, he had a tractor, which made him more of a farmer in my eyes. It was a large lot filled with all kinds of perennials. The most prominent section was a raspberry orchard that must have been at least 50’ x 8’. It was heaven on earth to go out there in summer and pick and eat as many raspberries as we wanted. Another section was a huge rhubarb patch. One year, I picked 100 pounds of stalks to use at my bakery. We had apples, irises, and other flowers that came up year after year. But the real surprise came during our first spring, when I was walking the property. The oddest thing imaginable was “springing” up from the ground. An asparagus stalk. And then another, and another. It was like being in a surrealistic Salvador Dali painting. I had never seen a vegetable growing isolated like that, as most vegetables are seen on bushes, vines or common stalks. They came up every year like that. Amazing. The part of the asparagus that is eaten is the young stalk. If you let the stalks grow, the tips sprout into ferns. Asparagus ferns were all the rage in the ’70s, hanging in restaurants and people’s homes. Who knew? Not me. Asparagus is typically green. White asparagus comes from the same plants, but they have not been exposed to the sun. When their tips begin to come up, the gardener covers them with soil so they stay white. They are considered a real delicacy, particularly in Europe. White asparagus tastes sweeter and is more tender. China is the largest grower and exporter of asparagus in the world. Here in the U.S., most asparagus is grown in California, Michigan or Washington. It is a very nutritious vegetable containing fiber, folate, potassium, and vitamins A, K, and C. It is low in calories and contains no fat or cholesterol. There is a debate whether to peel the spears or not. I personally think it’s a waste of time. The point of that is to make the stalks more tender, but if you cut or snap off the bottom at the right place, there is no need for it. One could argue that it does make the asparagus look more elegant. I will give you that. When buying asparagus, you want to select even-sized spears so they cook at the same rate. I prefer medium ones. The tips should be tight and not at all slimy. Asparagus can be roasted, grilled, steamed, or boiled. Overcooking is the kiss of death. They become stringy and quite frankly, ugly. The beauty of these lovely spring vegetables is that they take very little time to cook and can be topped with any number of offerings. Today’s recipe features oven-roasted asparagus with a garlicky crumb topping. They can also be grilled instead of roasted. Either method imparts a great flavor. I almost never steam or boil them because it brings nothing to the party, so to speak. Tell us here at The Insider what you like to top your spring asparagus with. If you have the opportunity to pick your own, let us know if you think it’s a surreal experience! Roast Asparagus with Garlic Panko Crumbs & Almonds Yield: 6-8 Servings 2 lb. asparagus 2 Tbsp. olive oil 3 oz. butter 2 garlic cloves, minced 1/2 c. slivered almonds 1/2 c. panko crumbs Preheat oven to 400°. Line 2 baking sheets with foil. Spray with pan release. Snap off or cut about 2-3 inches from the bottom of the stalks. Arrange asparagus on the sheets facing in the same direction. Drizzle with olive oil; season well with coarse salt and pepper.  Toss together with your hands. Lay the asparagus in 1 layer. Bake for 12-15 minutes, depending on their thickness. While asparagus is cooking, melt the butter in a medium skillet over moderate heat.  Add the garlic, almonds, and crumbs. Sauté until gold brown, about 5-7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Arrange asparagus on a platter. Spoon on the topping. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Andy Borowitz | The New Yorker April 24, 2023 SAN FRANCISCO (The Borowitz Report)—His net worth plummeting after the explosion of SpaceX’s Starship, Elon Musk has fallen below Clarence Thomas on the list of the world’s richest people. Musk now finds himself lumped in with others who are less wealthy than Thomas, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Sultan of Brunei. Speaking to reporters, Musk was “livid” at being surpassed by Thomas, who, he complained, has done “almost nothing” to earn his fortune. “If Clarence wants eight billion dollars, all he has to do is climb aboard some dude’s yacht,” Musk said. “I have to persuade a billion idiots to buy a blue check mark.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

By Andy Borowitz | The New Yorker April 18, 2023 NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In his first on-air appearance since Fox News Channel settled Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit, Tucker Carlson reported that Fox News Channel did not settle Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit. “This just in,” Carlson began his program. “Fox News Channel has not paid $787.5 million to settle the defamation lawsuit against it.” “By not paying this money, Fox News Channel is not acknowledging that we reported any inaccurate information about the 2020 election,” he added. “In addition, we are demonstrating that we had a very, very strong case and would not have writhed like snivelling scoundrels on the witness stand.” “Finally, Dominion Voting Systems has apologized for giving us so much grief, and, to compensate us, they’ve agreed to pay Fox News Channel $787.5 million,” he said. “Case closed.” Carlson then discussed the network’s “huge victory over Dominion” with the Fox legal analyst and former federal judge George Santos. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.