2026-04-13 02:31:00
I went to New Orleans for a wedding last weekend. I used to go there pretty often, for work conventions and lots of Jazzfests, but hadn’t been back since Katrina. I was happy at how much the city, in this small three-day sampling, seemed like its old self. Among the many familiar things that enthralled me all over again: Cafe du Monde. I went twice. So great!
But then a certain someone—who, because I admire and respect and like her so much will only be identified in my story as “Defector editor Brandy Jensen”—told me I made a mistake. I should have instead gone to Loretta’s, which Defector editor Brandy Jensen wanted to make sure I knew “has better beignets.”
No, Defector editor Brandy Jensen, I shouldn’t’ve gone to Loretta’s. For all I know this Loretta’s place gets all the Michelin stars and sweeps all the James Beards every year for its beignets, and deserves ’em. Perhaps you should go to Loretta’s. But, by god, I still made a righteous choice both times I ended up at Cafe du Monde.
2026-04-13 00:29:34
The premise of Last One Laughing UK is simple and diabolical: stick a bunch of professionally funny people in a room together for six hours and forbid them from laughing. Crack once and you get a warning, break a second time and you’re out.
The first season was an unexpected hit on Amazon Prime last year, largely on the strength of eventual champion Bob Mortimer, who can deliver a phrase like “meats and cheeses, always pleases” in a way that will still make you laugh when you think about it days or weeks later. Mortimer is back for season two, which premiered on Mar. 19, ostensibly as a ringer although the cast this year is so stacked it doesn’t feel unfair.
Even if you don’t happen to have subscriptions to both Britbox and BBC Select (what can I say, I love watching sardonic detectives solve murders in various damp locales), you’ll probably recognize a few faces. They run the gamut of unflappability from stone-cold deadpan queen Diane Morgan, better known as Philomena Cunk, to Alan Carr, a man so flappable he giggles about as often as he breathes. Also in the mix are comedian Romesh Ranganathan, former Bake Off host Mel Giedroyc, Taskmaster stand-out Maisie Adam, and a handful of other people who all contribute to the robust entertainment economy of British chat shows.
2026-04-12 22:35:42
Donald Trump and his confederacy of douches—a clique that included Marco Rubio, Dana White, and Dan Bongino—showed up ringside at Miami’s Kaseya Center for last night’s UFC card around the same time that America's murderers row of peace negotiators (JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner) announced they were leaving Pakistan without a deal to end the US/Israel attacks on Iran.
Despite the bad war news, the show went on with the commander-in-chief, secretary of state, and failed FBI stooge sitting put to take it all in. And as was surely part of some promotional plan, shortly after Trump’s arrival, the UFC debuted a commercial for its scheduled June 19 card at the White House, which has somehow become part of our nation’s official sestercentennial celebration. That fight night, dubbed “UFC Freedom 250,” is described in the new AI-generated clip as “the most historic sporting event of all time.”
But even more embarrassing than the handle and tag line, the spot uses a fictional version of the White House to promote its event.
2026-04-11 03:21:43
Were it not for the virtual certainty that he will be cast in a Safdie-directed film at some point, Sid Rosenberg is not a person who should be known by anyone who does not live in or around New York City. He is a type of public figure that every city has, although the fact that he's this particular city's version makes him maybe a bit ruddier and cruder than the average. Most of those guys will never get to meet or be photographed with Donald Trump, and so will have to settle for spending their lives acting as much like him as their specific material circumstances allow.
That's been kind of a chancy proposition for Rosenberg, who currently hosts a radio show on a conservative talk radio station operated by the owner of the city's most widely reviled grocery store chain. (That owner, John Catsimatidis, has already been in a Josh Safdie movie.) Rosenberg has been a public figure in the city for a long time, growing larger and more distressingly toasted-looking along the way; the moment that Sid Rosenberg became capable of "taking it easy," he would be out of a job. There might be something half-tragic about this purgatory if Rosenberg didn't seem so comfortable there, and even if he had to wind himself up like a wrung-out pro wrestler before going on the radio every day to call Muslims parasites and talk about how no one respects the cops anymore, he'd still be doing all that and so fairly difficult to pity. The idea that there is anything that itches at Rosenberg about the sour sort of fame he has built for himself, as the voice of the city's aggrieved homeowner set and other local excessive force aficionados, is assuming facts not otherwise in evidence.
As it stands, Rosenberg has spent a lot of time cycling in and out of local media jobs, first due to addiction issues and then just due to his personality. He was fired from Don Imus's morning show on WFAN for "tasteless comments he made on the air about the singer Kylie Minogue's battle with breast cancer" in 2005, and then from his job at the station later that year when he no-showed a Giants pregame show he was supposed to host after attending an FHM magazine event in Atlantic City earlier in the weekend. This came after he was fired from Imus in 2001 for being extremely racist about Serena and Venus Williams, then rehired after apologizing, and then again in 2004 "referred to Palestinians as 'stinking animals' and said, 'They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now.'" By 2007, he was once again appearing on Imus.
2026-04-11 01:40:13
As the back end of the NBA season mercifully burns to ash, there are still a few oblong aesthetic joys to be found. Thursday night's action featured son-to-father and father-to-son assists, the hilarious spectacle of Josh Hart and Baylor Scheierman going bomb for bomb in Madison Square Garden, and the Nets losing on purpose by 29 on Fan Appreciation Night in a game, featuring a bunch of guys I'd never heard of and also this couple on the Jumbotron. Many of the contests involve at least one party trying to lose, whether for draft position or seeding reasons, which does not lead to what most people would call nice-looking hoops, though I find a something strangely beautiful in watching, say, Bez Mbeng spend all 48 minutes running pick-and-roll for the Jazz.
This brings us to the exception to this rule: the Sacramento Kings. While fellow tanking teams like the Utah Jazz are adopting the Mbeng Doctrine, no one in Sacramento seems totally aware that the Kings are eliminated from play-in contention. They held a multi-game "lead" for worst record in the NBA one month ago, and they have "slipped" to fifth thanks largely to a quixotic effort to help DeMar DeRozan climb up the NBA's all-time scoring list. In the process, the Kings are showing that, done well, tanking is not the simple, brainless practice many assume it is. It takes a certain degree of organizational alignment—from ownership through management, down to the coaching staff and thereby out onto the court—in order to, respectively: be fine with losing 10 games in a row by playing Bez Mbeng 48 minutes; sign Bez Mbeng to play 48 minutes; have 48 minutes to give Bez Mbeng, without having to invent an obviously fake injury to a disgruntled superstar; and simply roll the ball out there and say Bez, it's time to cook, again, for 48 minutes.
The Kings are not doing any of that, because they are a stupid organization run by penny-pinching owner Vivek Ranadivé, seemingly unaware that, instead of inventing everything from first principles, he can observe more competent NBA organizations (read: any of them) and learn from what they are doing. There is no alignment and no vision. I have enjoyed watching Maxime Raynaud flip-shot his way onto one of the All-Rookie teams and Dylan Cardwell chart new frontiers in the fields of offensive rebounding and offensive fouling, but this is pretty clearly a team that doesn't know how to lose (or to win, or to win by losing). Shutting down Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray, and Domantas Sabonis was a nice start, but nobody involved seemed to think it would take more than that. When competing against well-run organizations like the Jazz or the Indiana Pacers, you have to be ready for something like the Killian Hayes renaissance.
2026-04-11 00:43:21
The only interview that the filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli lists on his website is titled Filmmaker gets shot during interview, in which Borgli—you guessed it—gets shot during an interview. The short film opens with Borgli and his interviewer, standing against the idyllic horizon of Hollywood Hills, discussing the creation of Borgli’s first feature, Sick of Myself. Their conversation is sincere and frank—until Borgli is shot. The rest of the short, filmed as promotional material for Sick of Myself, is dryly funny. The paramedics go to the wrong address. Borgli insists on continuing the interview and gets shot again. The interviewer hangs his head in guilt; someone tries dangling a banana in front of Borgli’s paling face. “This is the same thing that happened to Werner Herzog,” someone on the film crew exclaims.
Such a short, acerbic and darkly humorous, says much about Borgli: He is a filmmaker who understands, very well, how to bait a public and lure an audience. The trick is to get shot by the public before you have the chance to be sincere—that way, you’ll never have to show your cards. Controversy has played strategically into the popularity of his latest film The Drama, which he directed and wrote. A week before the film’s release, TMZ reported that the parent of a victim in the Columbine High School shootings condemned the film for its “twist,” the same plot event that leading star, Zendaya, referenced on her recent Jimmy Kimmel Live appearance. (The twist will be discussed in greater detail in this piece.) At the same time, a 2012 essay by Borgli, published in a Norwegian magazine, garnered renewed attention after it circulated on the A24 subreddit. The essay describes Borgli’s romantic encounter with a high schooler, as a 27-year-old. “She was May; I was December,” the translated essay ends dramatically. Coyly, even. A recent Vulture headline asked: “How Much Is Kristoffer Borgli Trolling Us?” A lot, I think.
Borgli called, and the public answered. The internet is alive with chatter about The Drama: This is a film about gun violence, about morality, about the state of America. It's good; it's bad; it's amazing; it's terrible. I'd argue that The Drama is, above all else, a good time in the theaters. The film is cleverly written and surprisingly hilarious. Before all other grand postulations, The Drama is a movie about an asshole and the woman he wants to marry. A flaw of the film might be that at times, it feels too dependent on its own cleverness, almost foreclosing itself from approaching even more depth by cloaking itself in irony. However, these defensive pretenses fall away as we approach the ending. At the film's conclusion is a small spark of sincerity. It happens to be just enough.
