The last time I sent a newsletter was a year ago this month. This time last year, I was recovering from the COVID-19 virus—and preparing for my NPR All Things Considered interview.
That was the start of my killer (professional) year. I had listened to NPR since I started driving in 2004 when George W. Bush caught Sadam because 9/11. It was surreal to see La Voz De M.A.Y.O. & Helm Greycastle sit among the top 10 best-selling Image Comics graphic novels overnight.
The other day The Atlanticpublished an article by Adam Rubenstein, a young conservative editor who was wrongly blamed for the supposed flaws in the Tom Cotton op-ed that caused an implosion at The New York Times, leading to his departure, James Bennet’s departure, and the reassignment of Bennet’s deputy, James Dao, to a different section.
There’s no need to revisit all the specifics. Just read Rubenstein’s piece. It is the same story Bennet himself told recently, but from a different angle, and equally worth reading (that is, very).
The Adam Project
Dir. Shawn Levy
106 min.
Back to the Future meets Star Wars meets Top Gun meets Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Last Starfighter meets Somewhere In Time—and that’s just for starters—in the abysmal Netflix movie The Adam Project, which is what happens when you wish on a cursed monkey’s paw that Hollywood would make more original movies. Last year, director Shawn Levy and his star, Ryan Reynolds, collaborated on Free Guy, the only Top 10-grossing movie of 2021 that wasn’t a sequel, reboot, franchise extension, or anything else drawn from pre-existing I.
Hey y’all, It’s the 4th of July and peak travel season here in America. Inspired by our summer reading thread, I thought I’d tell you about one of my favorite road trip books: John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley: In Search of America.
The setup: in 1960, Steinbeck was 58, in ill-health, wealthy, and famous. He’d been living overseas for a while and felt like he was out of touch with America.
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People ask me these days if I’m still on TV. The answer is: not really. So, where have I been? What happened to this formerly visible part of my career?
It came to my attention in July that I had been punished under old CNN leadership— kept off air since January— for tweeting about Jeffrey Toobin in a Twitter dust-up with Andrew Kaczynski (another CNN employee) regarding our network's coverage of the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting.