All we've heard about this show is that it's absolutely terrible, and now? "'The Newsroom' gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping."

● [Good bourbon] and coke

● A body shot

● Vodka Tonic

● Vodka Redbull

● Screwdriver

● Grasshopper/Girl Scout Cookie

I used to be really afraid of making pies. Like phobia-level afraid of it. (And tape worms. But the pie thing too.) Pie is something that is hard to get to come correct and everyone has different expectations and on top of that it’s not exactly the fastest thing to make, and that alone is pretty fucking horrifying. What if it comes out wet? What if the crust is tough? What if you forget to cut slits in it and turns into an apple and cinnamon sugar bomb and your grandmother cuts into it on Thanksgiving Day and her face is scoured off by a wall of searing hot [...]

Here are Saturday Night Live's three new cast members. About two of them, not much is known! In particular because it seems like the "digital strategy" at SNL is to make new cast members delete everything off the Internet upon hiring. It is an interesting position. In any event, at this time there's no telling how my season pass will fare. Will episodes continue to accumulate in their little folder, waiting for that week that I come down with a broken femur or something and run out of trashy movies? Could be! IF ONLY the Internet had a blog related to all things comedic to tell me what [...]

"He's recently appeared in all the publications that matter, including a featured excerpt in New York Magazine, and a photo shoot in Vogue that makes him look exactly like the very healthy, very handsome preppy power bottom that he was, is, but claims he never thought he'd be." -The number of people who are angry about and horrified by agent turned crack addict turned memoirist Bill Clegg is large!

"'When I came out in the 1980s, I would say the caddie breakdown was maybe 70 percent black, 30 percent white,' [J. J. Hylton, 70] said. 'Now it’s like 99.9 percent white to .1 percent black. There’s so much money on the regular tour now. It’s become a buddy system out there.'" —One of the last pro black caddies gets fired.

Up in the corner offices, there's a growing recognition that unrealistic demands on time are destroying the souls of… executives. "Always-on, multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy," notes a recent article in McKinsey Quarterly, the research publication of the giant global consulting firm that has been corporate America's chief efficiency cheerleader. "These scourges hit CEOs and their colleagues in the C-suite particularly hard." McKinsey's advice to beleaguered execs? Do one thing at a time; delegate; take more breaks.

Just try telling that to the millions of people whose work has been downsized, offshored, and sped up thanks to McKinsey.

—You've been [...]

It is true that there is no way that you could give "The Larry Sanders Show" enough credit in the history of TV comedy.

"And you know who a lot of America hates as much as they hate Muslims? New Yorkers."

"We need to celebrate every time someone starts a business in this country — not regulate it to death. A new business? Great. Go and compete. Do your best and make a lot of money." —Jeb Bush, political non-candidate.

Rosângela Rennó

Kris Martin

Koki Tanaka

Lisa Oppenheim

Oscar Tuazon

Nobel-winning Mario Vargas Llosa gives a very politic press conference! "I think literature is an expression of life-and you can not eradicate politics from life. Even if you think politics is, in many cases, a disgusting, dirty activity." Oh, like literature isn't.

I'm probably not the only one whose heart gets all fluttery when he sees the words "Gypsies" and "illegal camps" and "deportation" and "repatriation" in the same story, right? (Maybe that is just because I recently re-read Bruce Sterling's "Black Swan" last night, in which Nicolas Sarkozy is Nicolas the Rat, evil criminal.) Anyway, yeah. The Gypsies! Since we didn't manage to sterilize all of them in the 80s, I guess Sarkozy can send them out of France and back to Olde Europa. (Which is what? Moldavia?) Just don't let them near Sweden or Denmark. Or Germany. Or Italy. Or the Czech Republic. Or Hungary. [...]