Diane Keaton and Keanu Reeves at the 2020 Academy Awards.
Craig Sjodin/Getty Images
Keaton was also the rare woman in Hollywood who—even after reaching middle age—continued to be cast in romantic and powerful roles. Sure, she was a spurned spouse in 1996’s The First Wives Club, but one who rejected her philandering husband when he attempted a reconciliation. In 2003, her role in Nancy Meyers rom-com Something’s Gotta Give cemented that position, allowing Keaton dalliances with both Keanu Reeves and Jack Nicholson.
But in real life, Keaton never married—and she was fine with that, she said in 2019. “I think I’m the only one in my generation and maybe before who has been a single woman all her life,” she said then. “I don’t think it would have been a good idea for me to have married, and I’m really glad I didn’t.”
Over the course of her career, Diane Keaton also won a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globes (Annie Hall and 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give) , and a Tony Award, among other honors. She was also well known as a style icon for her trendsetting mix of traditionally masculine garb in unexpected proportions. “When you think of Diane, you think of these great pieces of clothing,” designer Michael Korssaid of Keaton in 2014.
Diane Keaton on May 01, 2021 in Los Angeles,
BG004/Bauer-Griffin
Keaton was also a photographer and writer, penning memoirs Then Again, Brother & Sister, and Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty. Speaking with Vanity Fair in support of the latter book, Keaton said that her most marked characteristic was “Insecurity in conjunction with ambition.” When asked what her favorite occupation was, she responded “Seeing. As Walker Evans said, ‘Look! We don’t have that much time.’”
Peck’s curatorial approach transforms the stage into a meeting place for genres, generations and creative sensibilities in constant dialogue. Photo: Riker Brothers
In 2022, New York City Ballet’s beloved ballerina Tiler Peck curated a show for New York City Center’s inaugural Artists at the Center program: Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends. The show received critical and audience acclaim in New York City, went on to perform at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London (where the piece Time Spell received an Olivier Award nomination for Best New Dance Production) and then toured Peck’s home state of California. It is now returning to City Center for an encore presentation from October 16 to 19—great news for those of us who missed the popular show the first time around.
The program includes fresh (as in, they first premiered in 2022) works of ballet, contemporary and tap dance from some of the greatest choreographers working today. It opens with the quartet The Barre Project, Blake Works II by modern ballet pioneer William Forsythe, set to music by James Blake, followed by Peck’s sextet Thousandth Orange, set to live music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw. After that is the duet Swift Arrow by San Francisco’s king of contemporary ballet, Alonzo King, with music by jazz composer Jason Moran. And closing the program is the City Center commission Time Spell, a collaboration between Peck, tap dance queen Michelle Dorrance, and Emmy-nominated contemporary choreographer Jillian Meyers, with music by Aaron Marcellus and Penelope Wendtlandt. Peck dances in all the works except her own, and the show’s all-star cast also includes fellow NYCB company members India Bradley, Chun Wai Chan, Christopher Grant, Mira Nadon, Quinn Starner, and Ryan Tomash, along with Boston Ballet principal dancer Jeffrey Cirio, dancer and So You Think You Can Dance season 14 winner Lex Ishimoto and tap dancer Byron Tittle.
Observer recently spoke with Peck—always warm, humble and on the move—about her excitement for the show’s encore presentation, her bottomless desire to grow as an artist and her love and admiration for her friends.
How did Turn It Out with Tiler & Friends first come together?
I have curated other shows, but this is the only program I’ve ever created from scratch. None of these pieces existed before I asked the choreographers to make them. So Turn It Out with Tiler feels the most special to me, because it’s kind of like my little child.
I started working on it during the pandemic. I’d always wanted to work with Bill Forsythe, and he had wanted to work with me, but we could never get our schedules together. So I called him and said, “Hi, Bill, I know everything’s, like, shut down, but would you want to work together? I know it’s not ideal.” And he was like, “When can we start?” And I was like, “How about tomorrow?” And so that’s how that piece came about. We just started working together over Zoom. We didn’t know what it would become. After a while, he said, “I think we need to bring some gentlemen in.” And so we did. After we finished The Barre Project, we released it on film so people could see it. But the first time it was ever performed live was at City Center for this show, and the only time we’ve ever done it with the original cast, the way he created it, is during this particular Turn It Out with Tiler show that we tour.
What about the Alonzo King piece?
It was the same thing. I called Alonzo and said, “I really want to work with you. How would you feel about creating something for me?” And he said, “Oh my gosh, I would love to.” And so we made a little bubble in San Francisco. There were just four of us in the room. And he created a pas de deux for Roman and me during that time, which has also only been seen whenever this show is done. My choreography, Thousandth Orange, began at the Vail Dance Festival, but this version we perform is very different. Time Spell was created specifically for this show and has only ever been performed in this show.
How has it been returning to Thousandth Orange, a work you created a few years ago?
It’s nice because I can adjust it for the dancers who are doing it now. It doesn’t have to be a museum piece. That’s one great thing about being a living choreographer—you can still make those changes!
When you first performed the show and toured it, what responses did you get from the audience?
I think Time Spell really transports people. When I’m in the wings listening to Penny and Aaron sing, I feel that, but I wasn’t sure how the audience would react. It’s really hard, I think, to try to mix styles without it looking like “Oh, there’s a tap dancer and there’s a ballet dancer and contemporary dancer and they’re all trying to dance together!” But to me, the seamlessness of how this is blended, you don’t even realize that you’re watching so many different forms of dance in one piece. And so many of the dancers are multitalented. Like Lex is tapping alongside Michelle Dorrance, but then doing a pas de deux with me, because he can do ballet too. A lot of people have told me Time Spell does not leave them. They don’t always understand how to explain it, but they’re so moved by it. And that’s been the case every time we’ve performed it.
How did you go about making that piece?
I wanted to work with Michelle, and Michelle had the idea to bring Jillian Meyers in, too. So the three of us really worked together. They’re so talented. I just helped blend the ballet into it. But everybody was super collaborative. Michelle is just… I don’t know, she’s just like the most talented person I know, and this is, I think, one of her favorite things she’s ever made.
What excites you about returning to this program again?
The nice thing about getting to do something more than once is that you get to dive deeper into each piece and role. And I feel like that’s what’s so beautiful about the show now—it’s really finding its roots, and everybody feels comfortable in it.
These are the most incredible artists to be surrounded by. I think all of us love being in the room together, because we each feel like we grow by getting to work with one another. We all push each other. And we become a really tight family of people. I think that feeling comes across in the show because the works were created during a time when nobody was able to be together. This was the first thing we could do. We were in masks when we first started! And so it really has this feeling of longing, of not being with somebody, and then coming back, and the intersections that happen there. I feel like the more that we all understand the work, the richer it’s become. And because we don’t get to do it often, every time we dance together, it feels fresh.
What’s it like dancing styles so different from what you normally do at NYCB?
Growing up, I wasn’t a classical dancer at all. I took ballet so that my technique would be strong, but I was really a jazz contemporary dancer. So I think that’s why I feel so comfortable in these types of work. At this point in my career, I want to be pushed by choreographers, and not just physically. Alonzo really digs deep into the human side of dancing. He is kind of like a philosopher, and I was interested in growing that way as a dancer. When you’re in the studio with him, you learn so much about yourself and about dance and the world. He has this way of sharing that’s unlike any other choreographer, I think.
And Bill is the most musical person ever, so working with him was like a dream. The way he would explain things like compressing and stretching time, it felt like I was getting a lesson on how to choreograph and dance at the same time every time we worked.
And you’re so musical, too—that’s a great pairing!
You know what’s funny? The one person who makes me feel not musical is Michelle. She can hear notes and beats that my ear doesn’t even go to, and I think I’m musical, so that’s why I’m always so interested in working with her. She’s constantly pushing me to hear and see and explore even further. What I love about this show is that it’s everything. It combines so many types of dance forms into one. I only wear pointe shoes for one of the pieces! It’s more than just a ballet performance. It’s an evening of dance.
Bradley Cooper’s third feature after Maestro andA Star is Born—the divorce-and-stand-up dramedy Is This Thing On?—departs from the musical focus of his previous efforts but, like them, comes achingly close to being great. The actor-director is three-for-three when it comes to films about art and artistry that just come up short, while displaying enough thoughtful flourishes to convince you he’ll create a masterpiece down the line. Sadly, today is not that day, but the result remains perfectly entertaining.
The story, penned by Cooper, Mark Chappell, and the movie’s lead actor will arnett, begins with dour finance man Alex Novak (Arnett) and his anxious homemaker wife Tess (Laura Dern) mutually deciding to separate. It’s a spontaneous moment seemingly informed by lengthy consideration off-screen, and while this framing provides little context as to their reasons, the movie opens up space for both characters to re-litigate their relationship in some unique and enticing ways. The couple’s ten-year-old boys readily accept the amicable separation, even if it means splitting their time between Tess in their suburban home and Alex in his new bachelor pad in Manhattan. However, in order to cope with the unexpected grief of the situation, Alex finds himself—at first by happenstance and then by intent—at various open mic nights at New York’s Comedy Cellar, letting his troubles pour out of him in the form of some decidedly average stand-up. It’s an experiment he keeps close to his chest, like a dirty secret, the gradual reveal of which makes for some fun situational comedy.
Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s camera remains tethered to Alex’s uncomfortable close-ups for most of his sets as he finds ways to turn his impending divorce into fodder for his act and learns the ropes from more seasoned comics in scenes filled with snappy wit. All the while, he and Tess remain in each other’s orbit and gradually navigate the awkward complications of remaining close despite going their separate ways. At first, Is This Thing On? plays like the tale of an artist discovering his hidden talent, but while Alex’s routine gestures at catharsis, it seldom helps him address his avoidant personality—or the lingering tensions that prevent him and Tess from figuring out their new dynamic. After all, men will literally [insert hobby here] instead of going to therapy.
The supporting characters around the couple weave in and out of focus, between Alex’s loving parents (Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds) and a litany of married pals, including Cooper himself as a floundering actor named Balls. Unfortunately, these B-plots tend to feel more intrusive than informative, especially when Cooper keeps the camera running—often on himself—for extended periods that reveal little about the characters and move the story even less. Still, they’re idiosyncratic enough to be amusing, even if Cooper could afford to leave some of his riffing on the cutting room floor.
However, when Will and Tess are the movie’s focus, there’s no end to its audiovisual delights. Cooper moves between scenes with furious momentum; one uproarious transition in particular makes literal the idea of bringing domestic woes to the stage, while James Newberry’s jazzy score creates numerous anxious crescendos at every turn. His commitment to capturing drama in real time yields engaging and side-splitting dialogue scenes, where the camera—although it oscillates noticeably between its leads without cutting away—affords his actors the chance to dig deep into the uncertainties underlying their confident, personable façades. These are polite masks they wear before one another, even during pleasant interactions, if it means never letting slip that they might blame themselves for their breakup. But as Alex explores stand-up and Tess tries to get back to her former career as a volleyball coach (with the help of an acquaintance played naturalistically by former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning), the duo also explores a complicated friends-with-benefits dynamic, while the question of whether they’ll ever admit their faults to themselves—let alone each other—continues to loom.
IS THIS THING ON? ★★★ (3/4 stars) Directed by: Bradley Cooper Written by: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds Running time: 120 mins.
The thorny evolution of the couple’s relationship speaks to an artistic desire to solve some kind of riddle that has no easy answer. Cooper and Arnett have both been through divorces themselves, and the movie captures vignettes of reality in energetic spurts, especially in isolated moments where the lead characters grow more worried, frustrated, or aggrieved, sometimes all at once. As a performance piece, Is This Thing On? is unimpeachable, and results in surprising despondency from Arnett and remarkable work from Dern, whose silent reactions and introspections speak louder than words. However, the adrenaline of the movie’s drama tends to wane the longer it goes on without a real objective in mind. It’s a film that ultimately has too many open questions without the dramatic rigor to justify them, even when its plot wraps up neatly (albeit too quickly and conveniently).
In a broader sense, one has to wonder if Cooper has taken criticisms of his preceding work to heart. “No one wants an Oscar as badly as Bradley Cooper,” wrote Alex Abad-Santos for Vox, in a piece that also refers to him as a “try-hard.” It’s just one of several such sentiments that tend to accompany his writer-director-actor-producer (and occasionally singer) ventures, although this time, he’s mostly removed himself from the equation on screen and diverted his focus away from music altogether. This is unfortunately at odds with the kind of visual verve he usually brings to his movies. I also wrote in 2023 that he should just direct a musical already, a sentiment that holds true here as well, given how purposefully he moves his camera around each performer, creating enrapturing rhythms even when the movie’s other pieces don’t necessarily fit.
I tend to disagree with assessments like Abad-Santos’s, given how much of Cooper’s output is laced with emotional sincerity, whether or not his end goal is some intimate emotional purging or simply winning a trophy. Then again, in the intensely rendered but chaotic A Star Is Born, the more cogent but reserved Maestro, and now the more focused but less ambitious Is This Thing On?—all tales of artists finding themselves by opening up their veins and showing audiences what pours out—is there really a difference between the desire for catharsis and major accolades? Cooper’s latest is clearly the output of someone who has been through personal anguish, and like Alex Novak, he attempts to use his pain as the basis for not just something healing but something hilarious, albeit something deeply imperfect, too.
Across the country, schools are cracking down on cell phone use. At least 18 states have rolled out bell-to-bell bans, with New York calling phones “distraction devices.” Teachers are praising the shift, saying classes feel more focused. But teens? They’re not giving up so easily.
Students are sidestepping bans in the most millennial-inspired way possible, turning Google Docs into digital chat rooms. With laptops open, it looks like they’re working on assignments. In reality, they’re typing messages back and forth in real time, just like an old-school AOL chat room.
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide — free when you join my CyberGuy.com/Newsletter
Students secretly turn Google Docs into real-time chatrooms.(Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
A creative workaround for school cell phone bans
Parents and teachers admit the workaround is clever. One teacher said she respects her students’ determination to stay connected and even acknowledged that the phone ban has improved behavior and focus in class. Still, she worries that turning Google Docs into chat rooms could open the door to bullying or cheating. Parents are also weighing in. One parent told CyberGuy that some kids in their district are buying MacBooks just so they can text each other through iMessage. Others, the parent added, are leaning on email threads or even old-school Post-It notes to keep the conversation alive.
Teens share their classroom hacks on TikTok with pride.(Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Social media reaction
On TikTok, students proudly show off their “secret” Docs conversations. Captions range from playful, “Your cell phone rule was never going to stop me,” to defiant: “Can’t ever silence us, queens.” The creativity is earning laughs from older generations who remember the days before smartphones. But the trend is also stirring debate. Some parents see it as a harmless way for kids to adapt, while others worry it undermines the entire point of the ban. Educators are split too, amused by the ingenuity, yet frustrated that students are still finding ways to drift off task during lessons. The viral clips prove one thing for sure: when it comes to tech, today’s teens will always find a workaround.
Some kids buy MacBooks to keep texting through iMessage.(Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Parent tips for navigating school cell phone bans
If your child’s school has adopted a phone ban, there are a few ways you can help them adjust while keeping communication open and safe:
Talk about the rules at home: Explain why schools are putting these bans in place and set expectations for how your child should behave with laptops and other devices.
Offer safe communication plans: Work with your child and the school to establish how you’ll contact each other in case of an emergency. Some districts allow phones in lockers or require them to stay powered off in backpacks.
Encourage balance: Remind your child that downtime from screens can actually help them focus better in class and relax during the school day.
Monitor alternatives: Keep an eye on how your child uses tools like Google Docs, email or messaging apps. What starts as chatting with friends can sometimes veer into bullying or cheating.
Be open to feedback: Ask your child how the ban is affecting their school day. Their perspective can help you understand where the real challenges and benefits are showing up.
If you’re a parent, this shows just how inventive kids can be when rules are put in place. Cell phone bans may cut down on scrolling, but students are quickly shifting to other tools. They’re chatting through shared Google Docs, buying MacBooks so they can iMessage during class, swapping notes over email, and even sticking to old-school Post-Its to stay in touch. While some of these workarounds seem harmless, they also carry risks, from distractions that take focus away from learning to new opportunities for bullying or even cheating. For teachers, it’s a reminder that managing distractions in the classroom goes beyond phone policies. Laptops, messaging apps, and even simple sticky notes can become back doors for the same behaviors schools are trying to limit.
Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?
Think your devices and data are truly protected? Take this quick quiz to see where your digital habits stand. From passwords to Wi-Fi settings, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. Take my Quiz here: CyberGuy.com/Quiz
Phone bans are reshaping the school day, and educators are already seeing benefits. Yet students are proving they’ll always find ways to connect, whether through phones, laptops or even retro workarounds that echo the early internet era.
What do you think? Are these bans helping kids learn better, or are they simply pushing students to get sneakier with tech? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com/Contact
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide — free when you join my CyberGuy.com/Newsletter
Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.
For Donecia Abate, a graduate of Tuskegee and PVAMU, every design illuminates HBCU tradition and culture.
HUMBLE, Texas — You won’t find the designs at DC Apparel anywhere else. They are all created by the owner, Donecia Abate.
At DC Apparel, her distinctive designs celebrate the pride of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Abate herself is a graduate of both Tuskegee and Prairie View A&M University. In the video above, she shares her passion for HBCUs and the inspirations behind her designs.
DC Apparel is located at 14929 Old Humble Rd in Humble, Texas.
“This is the first time I’ve ever done any type of interview that is theater-related,” says iconic New York City club promoter Ladyfag. Born Rayne Baron, Ladyfag has spent the past nearly two decades producing queer nightlife in New York, shepherding dance parties like Holy Mountain, Battle Hymn, and LadyLand, a Pride music festival whose headliners this summer were Cardi B and FKA Twigs. Now Ladyfag is stepping off the dance floor and onto the stage to produce a play called Smuta, which premieres in Brooklyn on October 9.
“I guess I’m a theater queen,” she says.
Smuta isn’t much of a departure from strobe lights and the DJ booth. Written by up-and-comer Jacob Wasson and directed by Niamh Osh Jones,Smuta (pronounced smoo-tah) takes place in 2019, inside a club patronized by Moscow’s queer underground. The two-hander stars Oh, Mary! scene-stealer James Scully and The Morning Show’s Augustus Prew as Yakov and Goodboy, strangers who find each other as a spate of gay hate crimes ravage their community outside the club.
Jacob WassonRossCollab.
“It’s a play about two people caught in these circumstances that they have no way out of, and that’s something that’s familiar to me right now,” says Wasson. The 29-year-old playwright first wrote and produced Smuta in June 2023, putting the show up at Gymnopedie, a gymnasium in Bushwick that he rented by the hour. “I set up the whole show 30 minutes before we let people in, and then I had to take it down because the guy would have bookings afterwards,” says Wasson. He thought that short successful run would be the end of the road for Smuta. Then he found himself talking to Ladyfag at a Passover seder. “We got to talking, and she’s really interested in helping young artists in New York. And it got born out of there,” says Wasson. “It was like, ‘Oh, maybe this is an opportunity to do Smuta again.’” Ladyfag has one word to describe their unexpected collaboration: “Serendipity.”
“The only reason it’s actually happening is because of Lady,” says Wasson affectionately. “We’re just two Jewish girls.” Ladyfag chimes in: “Nice Jewish girls from the suburbs putting on a play.” Wasson finishes her sentence: “In the big, bad city.”
Rather than taking the traditional downtown or off-Broadway route, Wasson and Lady decided to take a big swing by mounting Smuta in an actual nightclub: Refuge, which recently opened in East Williamsburg and where Ladyfag serves as a resident promoter/party thrower. “What I loved was Jacob’s use of an unconventional space,” says Ladyfag. “My career, which obviously is not in theater, I have also searched that out. I used to do a lot of [parties] in different places that people wouldn’t normally do.” Part of that was born out of necessity, as she explains: “There’s no funds and I want to do something crazy that’s going to make no money: ‘Hey, I know this weird spot.’”
LadyfagPeter Tamlin.
The two-week-old Refuge is something of a culmination for Ladyfag. After moving from Toronto in the early aughts, she got her start in New York City nightlife as a cage dancer. “I moved here in the classic ‘I got a hundred bucks in my pocket and a dream,’ and I didn’t even know what my dream was,” she says. “I just wanted to come here for a few months as my last hurrah before I was about to open a vintage and antique store.”
A Denver brewery known as a hub for the Latino community closed suddenly this week after city officials seized the property’s assets due to unpaid back taxes.
Raíces Brewing Co. in Lincoln Park owed $98,703 in sales and personal property taxes, according to a distraint warrant issued by the city. The business closed on Wednesday when the warrant was issued.
Brewery CEO José Beteta was not immediately available to comment on the circumstances, but a detailed goodbye note on Raíces’ website states the company had been working with the city for about a year to establish a payment plan for the taxes. The company blamed “a series of unexpected charges” issued by the city that it said are related to what’s called a business personal property tax. That’s essentially a tax on whatever assets a business owns.
The note alleged that Raices had “never received prior billing notices” and that all invoices dating back to 2019 “arrived together in 2024, already including years of interest and penalties — despite our lack of prior information.”
However, city spokesperson Laura Swartz said in a statement that the personal property taxes owed only amounted to $10,765, or about 10% of the business’s total outstanding balance. Raices owed nearly $69,000 in sales tax and about $30,000 for penalties and interest, she said.
“It’s unfortunate that this situation has gotten to this point. We want Denver’s businesses to succeed and that means offering the best customer service we can to them,” Swartz said. “Before issuing a warrant, we attempt to reach the business by phone, mail, email, and in person to both collect the sales tax and ensure they can continue to operate. As Raices has noted, the city has attempted to work with them for years, including on a payment plan that was not fulfilled.”
Opened in late 2019, Raíces Brewing Co. offered a welcome dash of diversity to Denver’s craft beer scene. Raíces means “roots” in Spanish, and the brewery quickly became a hotspot for events and traditions celebrating Latino culture. Its annual Suave Fest spotlighted Latin beer makers from across the country.
Raíces’ closure is notable because of its unique space in the community, and also because the beer was worth seeking out. In 2022, it won a silver medal at the U.S. Open Beer Championship for its Furia imperial red ale.
“Raíces Brewing Co. has always been more than a business – it has been a space of community, culture, and human connection. A meeting place where thousands of people celebrated their roots, their identity, and their diversity. We are profoundly proud to have built a place that served our people and the city of Denver with love, respect, and purpose,” the goodbye note says. “In times when the world often feels increasingly divided, spaces like this become essential.”
And, seeing as that release—not a movie, but a mish-mash of the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” and behind-the-scenes footage from that, lyric videos, and straight-to-camera footage of Swift explaining her inspiration behind the songs—topped the weekend’s box office, raking in $33 million in domestic ticket sales. It came in above One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and dwarfed fellow debut The Smashing Machine, which took the third slot with $6 million.
So, while Swift’s acquisition of her masters, thus upping her profit on the use of her music, expands her net worth, the proceeds from having both the number one album and the number one movie (at the same time, may we add, something even Prince didn’t accomplish with his own Purple Rain one-two punch) certainly aren’t going to hurt her wallet either.
This isn’t the first time Swift has extended the fan experience to the cinema: In 2023, Swift brought a filmed version of her stage show, perhaps you’ve heard of it, a little something called Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, to AMC Theaters for an initial 13-week run. It went well, to say the least: The film raked in $180.7 million domestically, and $261.6 million worldwide, making it the most lucrative concert film of all time. The extremely limited release of Showgirl won’t top Eras, of course, but if there was any doubt that Swift could get butts in seats (to use the scientific term) in a variety of media, consider it thoroughly banished, opening the door for future multimedia experimentation for the artist.
A representative for Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
From New York to Paris, the month dedicated to Spring-Summer 2026 collections had a main character: Kai Schreiber. With blond hair and porcelain skin, the model has been a regular presence on various fashion week runways throughout the year, donning styles from a wide variety of designers on the runway, from Jason Wu to Fendi, Moschino to Valentino.
Born in New York City in 2008, Kai is a transgender woman, the second child of two big names in Hollywood, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, who have shared stories of her transition, which began at a young age. She’s often been targeted by the media for this as much as for the always controversial label of being a so-called nepo-baby in the fashion world. Her father recently said he didn’t take that criticism seriously: “I don’t have many thoughts for the haters,” he told TMZ earlier this year following Kai’s runway debut. “I’m gonna put it to you like this: What if you were a professional actor and your child decided they wanted to do something in this world. Do they have the choice of what you did? It doesn’t matter, like, that’s her life. She does what she wants with her life. And I’m super proud of her. I thought she did an amazing job on the show.”
Inside the theatre at a screening of “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party Of A Showgirl.”
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
In the music video, Swift literally steps out of a slew of frames, including wooden tableaus, life preservers, and more, to break the chain of the ill-“fated” showgirl like the fictional Ophelia. She goes so far as to say that her love life has “saved” her from drowning in insanity, especially given how much “men were gaslighting” her throughout her career. There is a reason why her own story “didn’t end tragically” like the “poetic hero” Ophelia’s. Despite Shakespeare’s, at times overlooked character, Ophelia dying, Swift herself was not “driven mad” like she could have been. (Swift adds that she “loves” William Shakespeare and The Bard is “not overhyped.”) “The Fate of Ophelia” is a rewriting of a character’s cultural history: Swift is asking what would happen if she became impenetrable to criticism–and then she lives out the answer.
Viewers learn that the music video required three weeks of rehearsals, and nods at Kelce with Swift catching a football in a scene. Her love for baking is also incorporated, as the only quasi-celebrity cameo is a round loaf of sourdough that Swift herself baked.
Further on, the retconning of Swift’s discography culminates in the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” featuring Sabrina Carpenter. The “Espresso” singer recorded her feature during her days off of touring in Sweden. “That is a showgirl for you,” Swift says, praising Carpenter before introducing the lyric video that includes footage of Carpenter opening for Swift during The Eras Tour. In the song, Swift and Carpenter play two characters mirroring the cyclical nature of fame: one is Kitty, a fictional showgirl who advises a fan to not join the music business, and the other is an aspiring singer who then later cautions one of her own fans against becoming a performer. “The more you play, the more that you pay…/You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe/And you’re never gonna wanna,” the lyrics warn. The sentiment is one Swift now uses as “fuel” to prove she has endured the industry for more than 20 years. Throughout the film, Swift continues to say that there is a prevailing perspective that apathy equates power, and that respect is granted to those only who appear to be the most “unbothered.”
From utopian dreams to dystopian warnings, time travel fiction reflects our hopes and fears for humanity’s future. Courtesy the publishers
For decades, authors and readers have been asking questions about what we would do, or change, if time travel existed—and what we could change. Would the smallest change, one killed butterfly, alter the entire future? Or could we edit here and there, as long as we were careful? And if we did, and then returned to our time, would it really be our time?
Time travel and its potential paradoxes have sent us into delightful questioning, adventures and spirals, from Back to the Future to The Time Traveler’s Wife to Outlander. The genre explores some of our most intriguing questions as humans: what our future might look like, and how our history influences our present and future. With romance, grand sci-fi epics and more, our picks for the best time travel books explore the kinds of opportunities, disasters and battles that time travel could create for us all.
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz. Courtesy Tor Books
Two groups fight across timelines for the future of women’s and queer rights. A team of cis male time travelers wants a timeline where women are never allowed to vote, ushering in an eventual male-supremacist future. Meanwhile, Tess and her squad want a future of reproductive justice and equality, and she heads back to World Fair-era Chicago to try to take down the Comstock Laws in this battle across history. A tantalizing mix of historical fiction and punk sci-fi.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Courtesy Saga Press
This epistolary novella is a series of love letters between two spies working for opposite sides of a war across time—nature versus science. It has garnered a cult following, thanks in part to a viral fan tweet. Short but dense with poetic prose, it’s a sapphic love story and an enemies-to-lovers tale as Red and Blue evolve from trying to one-up each other, to impressing one another, to risking the entire war if it means saving the other.
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Courtesy Ballantine Books
This underrated feminist sci-fi classic from the 1970s follows Connie, a Chicana woman on welfare who is wrongfully institutionalized in a mental hospital determined to break her spirit. She begins to dream of a possible utopian future, only to realize she is the hinge between two timelines—dystopia and utopia. Her ability to endure and remain alive may be the key to everyone’s future.
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Courtesy Griffin
The author of the smash hit Red, White & Royal Blue brings time travel into romance with the story of August, who falls for a mysterious stranger on the Q train. Except Jane’s look isn’t just vintage—she’s literally from the 1970s and is stuck in a subway time pocket. Part mystery, part romance and part found-family narrative, this novel weaves in themes of queer identity with McQuiston’s signature warmth.
All This & More by Peng Shepherd
All This & More by Peng Shepherd. Courtesy William Morrow
Time travel was made for the choose-your-own-adventure format, and in this new release, the reader gets to make the decisions. Marsh, 45 and full of regrets, is chosen to compete on a reality show that lets contestants change their pasts. She is determined to fix her life one choice at a time, but as the reader directs her fate, Marsh begins to wonder whether the show is really what it claims to be.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Courtesy Del Rey
Few books have won both Hugo and Nebula awards—this one has. Oxford student Kivrin sets out on a simple research project: travel back to the Middle Ages for an observational study. But a timing error sends her not to 1320 but to 1348—the year the Black Death arrived. Stranded in one of history’s darkest chapters, she must fight to survive and find her way back in this sci-fi classic.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot. Courtesy Hanover Square Press
In a small cafe in Tokyo, if you sit at a particular table, you can travel back in time to meet anyone you wish. The catch? You must return before your coffee gets cold. Rather than leaning on twisty sci-fi mechanics, this international bestseller focuses on emotional resonance. Simple yet cathartic, it follows four visitors as they step briefly into their pasts.
Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch
Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch. Courtesy Riverhead Books
Fleeing a raid in 2079 New York City, Laisve discovers she can use small, meaningful objects to travel through time. Over the course of the novel, she connects with the sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty, the iron workers who built it, a whale named Bal and others. Together, their stories form a meditation on climate change, exploitation and the futures we may yet face.
Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen
Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen. Courtesy MIRA
Kin, a secret agent from the future, becomes stranded in the 1990s. Eighteen years later, he has built a new life and raised his daughter Miranda, only for a rescue team to arrive and attempt to return him to 2142—erasing her in the process. Torn between timelines, Kin refuses to let his daughter disappear, even if it means breaking every rule of time travel.
Vidal returned to these themes in “The War at Home,” the first VF essay of his I edited. He warned that the country was coming apart not just from imperial overreach of what he liked to call the Cheney-Bush oil-and-gas junta, but also from neglect at home. He saw a nation of people dispossessed, farmers forsaken, workers abandoned, pointing to those left behind by the new economy and a political class (in both parties) deaf to their grievances. “[T]here are vast areas, like rural America, that are an unmapped ultima Thule to those who own the corporations that own the media that spend billions of dollars to take polls in order to elect their lawyers to high office,” he wrote. He predicted that popular resentment would not remain latent—that it would be harnessed by demagogues who spoke in the language of populism while advancing the interests of entrenched power. At the time, critics waved it off: Vidal being Vidal. Today it reads as a forecast of the politics of grievance and resentment that would fuel the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
The U.S. Bill of Rights is being steadily eroded, with two million telephone calls tapped, 30 million workers under electronic surveillance, and, says the author, countless Americans harassed by a government that wages spurious wars against drugs and terrorism.
Arrow
One morning, soon after “The War at Home” was published, I arrived at the magazine’s offices, and my assistant, Marc Goodman, told me there was a letter on my desk that I should look at right away. Many pages, handwritten in tiny script on yellow lined paper, it was from the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, with a return address of the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. There was a Post-it on the first page: “Hey Matt, please pass this on to Gore. —Tim.” It was duly faxed to Ravello. Vidal called, aglow. McVeigh had been studying the Bill of Rights while on death row and reading a lot of Gore Vidal. The two started a correspondence about their mutual interest in the erosion of the Bill of Rights, which became the basis for another essay, “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh.” In that piece, later selected for the 2022 edition of The Best American Essays, Vidal set out not to excuse McVeigh’s atrocity—he was careful to note that nothing could justify the killing of 168 people, including 19 children in the day care center of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City—but to place the bomber’s fury in a wider American context. He argued that McVeigh’s rage over Waco (a federal siege ending in the deaths of 82 people) and Ruby Ridge (a raid in Idaho that left three dead), along with his distrust of an unaccountable federal government, reflected a deep alienation shared by millions, especially neglected rural and working-class Americans. The reception was explosive: Critics accused Vidal of giving a platform to a mass murderer, even as he stressed that he did not condone the bombing and insisted that McVeigh’s mindset revealed the sickness of the republic. McVeigh, who invited Vidal to witness his execution in June 2001, became a kind of dark mirror to Vidal’s analysis. Vidal made plans to attend the death by lethal injection but canceled at the last minute. “He’s a harbinger,” Vidal told me. I was not sure I completely believed him at the time, but that harbinger now looks an awful lot like one foreshadowing the arrival of Trump and the MAGA movement, which have been very effective at channeling the same grievances into political power. That brings to mind another Vidal line: “The four most beautiful words in the English language, ‘I told you so.’”
Gore Vidal’s 1998 Vanity Fair essay on the erosion of the U.S. Bill of Rights caused McVeigh to begin a three-year correspondence with Vidal, prompting an examination of certain evidence that points to darker truths-a conspiracy willfully ignored by F.B.I. investigators, and a possible cover-up by a government waging a secret war on the liberty of its citizens.
Arrow
Editing Vidal was an adventure on many fronts. In the lush days of Condé Nast’s bottomless expense accounts and budgets, lavish gifts were the norm when a star writer turned in a big piece. Vidal drank gin by the gallon (to wash down the Macallan 12), so once I sent a case of Bombay Sapphire to Ravello. Turns out the gin had to be driven 170 miles from Rome. The fax machine soon spat out a page with his scrawl: “Mother’s milk arrived with trucker’s compliments.” There were other contributor perks. He could only write his essays on vintage portable Olivetti Lettera typewriters (novels were composed in long hand on legal pads). The Olivettis were getting harder to repair, so my assistant found a trove of them and ordered the lot. We kept about a half dozen in the office to FedEx to Italy for stuck keys and other technological emergencies. Once, when Vidal was on deadline and staying in his usual suite at The Plaza in Manhattan, an Olivetti was messengered over for him. He and I got back from a long, wet dinner at the restaurant Daniel, and he sat down to write while I was still there. I was amazed to see that he composed those long, intricate essays using one finger, pecking out a single letter at a time. A typist was hired to create a final draft from the messy, marked-up Olivetti typescripts, and he never dropped a stitch in his copy. He was probably the only writer in the history of the magazine allowed by the revered copy chief, Peter Devine, to invent a word. It was the adverb sickenly, a short version of sickeningly, that Devine let slide, saying, “After all, it’s Gore Vidal.”
As Vidal and I grew closer, I made trips to Ravello to visit him and his companion of more than 40 years, Howard Austen. They lived at La Rondinaia, a vast four-level villa built into the side of a sheer cliff and surrounded by terraced gardens, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. The world came to Vidal in Ravello. In the guest rooms there were silver-framed photos of famous previous occupants: Johnny and Joanna Carson, Lauren Bacall, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Leonard Bernstein, Rudolf Nureyev. When Hillary Clinton paid a visit in 1994, La Repubblica’s headline was “Lady Clinton nel Paradiso di Vidal.” It was there that the Maestro could read and write with the distractions of the modern world kept at a safe distance, while Austen dealt with all quotidian matters. An admirer of his paternal grandfather, the populist Oklahoma senator T.P. Gore, a man of the 19th and early 20th century, Vidal identified more with those pretech times. I think it helped him conjure the distant pasts of his historical novels, which were meticulously researched and scrawled out on yellow legal pads. (His book 1876 landed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1976, but Burr and Lincoln are his two masterpieces of the genre.) His only nod to the digital age was his fax machine, which made sending manuscripts a breeze. He called his hi-fi “the victrola” and hadn’t driven a car in decades. He walked the stairs and terraces of the Amalfi Coast daily, which I think contributed to his relative longevity, despite levels of alcohol consumption that were hard to reconcile with such a staggeringly prolific career. He prided himself on never drinking on the job. While staying with him, I noted that he worked regular hours, reading and writing in his book-lined studio overlooking the sea from 10 a.m. until lunch. He then went back to work until, as he said, “the shadows grow long”—cocktail hour—about 5 p.m. He pronounced to me once that his doctor told him he had “a perfect liver.” And true, it never gave out. When his feuding rival of the ’60s and ’70s, Truman Capote—who Vidal frequently claimed did drink while working—died at the home of Joanne Carson, one of his “swans,” in 1984, Vidal’s infamous response was, “Good career move.” Their fractious relationship blossomed into a lawsuit in 1975. Thereafter, Vidal dismissed Capote with the line, “I saw him only once again, in 1968, when, without my glasses, I mistook him for a small ottoman, and sat down on him.”
Vidal campaigning as the Democratic candidate for Congress for the 29th Congressional District of New York in Poughkeepsie, April 7, 1960.Ben Martin/Getty Images.
There’s no ignoring the Travis Kelce of it all, either: The newly engaged Swift is happy, happy, happy, not to mention, well, undeniably a bit horny and making sure listeners know that those needs are met too. The track “Wood” is enough to make your mother-in-law clutch her pearls (“His love was the key / To open my thighs,” not to mention her aural smirk on the word “cocky,” or referencing “new heights of manhood” in a nod to Kelce’s…microphone), and “Actually Romantic” turns rivals’ trash-talking into dirty talk, complete with Swift claiming that her haters’ attention is “kind of making me wet.” Gone is Midnights’ “Lavender Haze” and its nonchalant “damned if I do give a damn what people say.” And in the same song, she insisted that she was in no rush to get wifed up: “All they keep askin’ me / Is if I’m gonna be your bride / The only kind of girl they see / Is a one-night or a wife.” Now, on “Wood,” “Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet / To know a hard rock is on the way.” Not enough? Fine, let’s be more explicit, as she is in “Eldest Daughter”: “When I said I don’t believe in marriage / That was a lie.” With Kelce, who proposed not long after Swift gushed on New Heights that she’d found the fairytale love that she’d been singing about for decades, she’s writing a new, forward-looking history.
She self-corrects the long-ago “White Horse” lyric from 2008’s Fearless, “Cause I’m not your princess / This ain’t a fairytale” in “Eldest Daughter,” where she echoes that original melody and declares, “But I’m not a bad bitch / And this isn’t savage” after admitting, in what is perhaps a nod to her initial brush-off of Kelce, “When you found me I said I was busy / That was a lie.” Answering her teenage self who yearned on her debut album for somebody who “might actually treat me well” in the next line of “White Horse,” Swift has come full circle from the hardened superstar she tried to present and admits her vulnerabilities, her need for love, that basketball hoop and the kids that she confesses to dreaming of in “Wi$h Li$t.”
And look at “Honey,” where she recontextualizes pet names she’s been called, the sweetness of love stripping away passive-aggressive “bless her soul”-type venom: “You can call me honey if you want / Because I’m the one you want / I’m the one you want / You give it different meaning / Cause you mean it when you talk.”
And there it is in “Opalite,” too. Opal is the October-born Kelce’s birthstone, and opalite is the man-made version of it. “Sleepless in the onyx night / But now the sky is opalite,” Swift sings, perhaps nodding to the theme of paralyzing, sleepless anxiety and darkest-hour regret on Midnights, one of her moodier offerings. “You had to make your own sunshine, but now the sky is opalite,” the song continues. No more “Invisible String,” folklore‘s ode to a long-destined romance: Swift and Kelce finding one another took work and intention (great job, Andy Reid), and now they’re here to reap the rewards of that—together.
History is written, after all, by the victors. And what is Swift, with all her historic sales and records, if not an all-time champion?
Taylor Swift rarely fights in public. Instead, she takes shots via her music. On “Actually Romantic,” the seventh track from Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, the biggest pop star in the world seemingly takes a dig at none other than Charli XCX.
Many outlets, including TheGuardian and the Los Angeles Times, believe that Swift’s song, co-written with Max Martin and Shellback, is a diss track aimed at the Brat songwriter. The song’s title, “Actually Romantic,” seems to be referencing the Charli XCX song “Everything Is Romantic” off her critically acclaimed and Grammy-winning album Brat. But while both titles share a word, other believe Swift’s track is a direct response to Charli’s song “Sympathy Is a Knife,” rumored to have been partially inspired by Swift.
“Actually Romantic” directly addresses a hater of Swift’s who calls her “boring Barbie when the coke’s got you brave.” Charli played with the party-drug culture aesthetic throughout her Brat era. Swift goes on to sing that the same friend high-fived an ex of hers after they found out that Swift and her boyfriend broke up. Many fans read that as a reference to Matty Healy, frontman of the band The 1975, with whom Taylor briefly dated and often seemingly wrote about in her last studio album The Tortured Poet’s Department. This is where the Charli XCX connection becomes more prominent. George Daniel, Charli’s husband, is the drummer for The 1975. Healy and his mother, Denise Welch, attended Charli and George’s wedding in Sicily last month.
Taylor Swift and Matty Healy in 2023.
Robert Kamau
Charli and Taylor weren’t always enemies. In 2018, the British pop star opened for Swift on her Reputation stadium tour alongside Camila Cabello. The following year, however, she said in an interview with Pitchfork that performing in front of Swift’s audience left her cold. “I’m really grateful that (Taylor) asked me on that tour,” said Charli. “But as an artist, it kind of felt like I was getting up onstage and waving to five-year-olds.”
Taylor goes on to describe her anonymous hater in “Actually Romantic” as a “toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse,” accusing her target of writing a song about how much it sucked to see her face. But in the chorus, Swift turns the polemic into something of a compliment. “It’s actually sweet all the time you’ve spent on me / It’s honestly wild all the effort you’ve spent on me/ It’s actually romantic I really gotta hand it to you / No man has ever loved me like you do.” So, is “Actually Romantic” a diss track or a love letter? You decide.
Every year, Hispanic Heritage Month offers the United States a chance to honor the profound and varied contributions of Latino communities. We celebrate scientists like Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina woman in space, and activists like Dolores Huerta, who fought tirelessly for workers’ rights. We use this month to recognize the cultural richness that Spanish-speaking families bring to our communities, including everything from vibrant festivals to innovative businesses that strengthen our local economies.
But there’s a paradox at play.
While we spotlight Hispanic heritage in public spaces, many classrooms across the country require Spanish-speaking students to set aside the very heart of their cultural identity: their language.
This contradiction is especially personal for me. I moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States as an adult in hopes of building a better future for myself and my family. The transition was far from easy. My accent often became a challenge in ways I never expected, because people judged my intelligence or questioned my education based solely on how I spoke. I could communicate effectively, yet my words were filtered through stereotypes.
Over time, I found deep fulfillment working in a state that recognizes the value of bilingual education. Texas, where I now live, continues to expand biliteracy pathways for students. This commitment honors both home languages and English, opening global opportunities for children while preserving ties to their history, family, and identity.
That commitment to expanding pathways for English Learners (EL) is urgently needed. Texas is home to more than 1.3 million ELs, which is nearly a quarter of all students in the state, the highest share in the nation. Nationwide, there are more than 5 million ELs comprising nearly 11 percent of the U.S. public school students; about 76 percent of ELs are Spanish speakers. Those figures represent millions of children who walk into classrooms every day carrying the gift of another language. If we are serious about celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, we must be serious about honoring and cultivating that gift.
A true celebration of Hispanic heritage requires more than flags and food. It requires acknowledging that students’ home languages are essential to their academic success, not obstacles to overcome. Research consistently shows that bilingualism is a cognitive asset. Those who are exposed to two languages at an early age outperform their monolingual peers on tests of cognitive function in adolescence and adulthood. Students who maintain and develop their native language while learning English perform better academically, not worse. Yet too often, our educational systems operate as if English is the only language that matters.
One powerful way to shift this mindset is rethinking the materials students encounter every day. High-quality instructional materials should act as both mirrors and windows–mirrors in which students see themselves reflected, and windows through which they explore new perspectives and possibilities. Meeting state academic standards is only part of the equation: Materials must also align with language development standards and reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of our communities.
So, what should instructional materials look like if we truly want to honor language as culture?
Instructional materials should meet students at varying levels of language proficiency while never lowering expectations for academic rigor.
Effective materials include strategies for vocabulary development, visuals that scaffold comprehension, bilingual glossaries, and structured opportunities for academic discourse.
Literature and history selections should incorporate and reflect Latino voices and perspectives, not as “add-ons” during heritage month, but as integral elements of the curriculum throughout the year.
But materials alone are not enough. The process by which schools and districts choose them matters just as much. Curriculum teams and administrators must center EL experiences in every adoption decision. That means intentionally including the voices of bilingual educators, EL specialists, and, especially, parents and families. Their life experiences offer insights into the most effective ways to support students.
Everyone has a role to play. Teachers should feel empowered to advocate for materials that support bilingual learners; policymakers must ensure funding and policies that prioritize high-quality, linguistically supportive instructional resources; and communities should demand that investments in education align with the linguistic realities of our students.
Because here is the truth: When we honor students’ languages, we are not only affirming their culture; we are investing in their future. A child who is able to read, write, and think in two languages has an advantage that will serve them for life. They will be better prepared to navigate an interconnected world, and they carry with them the ability to bridge communities.
This year, let’s move beyond celebrating what Latino communities have already contributed to America and start investing in what they can become when we truly support and honor them year-round. That begins with valuing language as culture–and making sure our classrooms do the same.
Altagracia “Grace” Delgado, Texas Association for Bilingual Education & Assessment for Good
Altagracia “Grace” Delgado has devoted 30 years to education, serving as a bilingual teacher, literacy coach, and both a school and central office administrator. A passionate advocate for students in special populations, she collaborates with various organizations to ensure they receive the support and resources they need. Grace serves as a Board Member of the Texas Association for Bilingual Education and an Advisory Board Member for Assessment for Good, a project of the Advanced Education Research & Development Fund, as well as the Houston Christian University’s Women in Leadership Program.
Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)
[ad_2]
Altagracia “Grace” Delgado, Texas Association for Bilingual Education & Assessment for Good
Though the original song’s lyrics seem to address a person vowing to take care of and protect a romantic partner, in the Faith: Legacy Edition album booklet, Michael discussed the production of the song and the transformative power of adding and subtracting different musical elements.
“It started off with a rhythm track with a snare, and when you play it like that it sounds a bit like Prince. I must have been listening to it without the snare and gone, ‘Oh my God, that totally changes the record!’ It suddenly becomes a gospel record,” he said of early versions of the song.
“A couple of things in my career have been a complete accident, where I stumbled upon the sound. I know when something resonates, and one of my saving graces is that I can hear something when I stumble upon it. I have the ability to stop and say: ‘No. Actually, that’s much better.’ It’s tiny little things like that that make a record, I think.”
To say that Swift has been heavily involved in the production and marketing of her own music is the understatement of the century. By nodding to Michael’s classic No. 1 hit, is she making a statement about power and musicality? Could the song be something of a spiritual sequel to “The Man,” in which she imagined how her actions would be viewed if she wasn’t a woman? Or, perhaps, the allusion is more to do with Babygirl director Halina Reijn’s interpretation of the song, as she explained to Indiewire. For her, the track is about the freedom that comes with an assurance of safety.
“We all, men, women, any human being, any person, has a young child inside of them that needs to be taken care of,” she said. “Whether we are 80 years old or 6 years old, it’s still there. And that is what it taps into for me.”
Whether Swift is positioning herself as the father or the fathered, her entry into the George Michael Extended Universe is sure to be a seismic one. Welcome to your Showgirl Era, Daddy.
Representatives for Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Robbie Williams says that he’s been privately fighting a battle against what he calls “inside Tourette’s.” The British pop star and subject of Oscar-nominated film Better Man shared the news while appearing on the comedian Paul Welsh’s podcast, I’m ADHD! No You’re Not.
“I’ve just realized that I have Tourette’s, but they don’t come out,” Williams said on the podcast. “I was just walking down the road the other day and I realized that these intrusive thoughts are ‘inside Tourette’s.’”
Tourette syndrome, as defined by the CDC, is a condition of the nervous system often defined by sudden, repetitive sounds or movements, often known as tics, that can be triggered by factors such as stress, excitement, or tiredness.
Williams, who kicked off his Britpop Tour in May, says that he has been an “Olympian at masking” his symptoms, and that his condition makes performing live extremely difficult. “I have a very complicated relationship with touring and performing live,” he said on the podcast. “People say, ‘Oh, you going on tour? You must be really, really excited.’ Not really. I’m terrified.”
The “Angels” singer is aware that he may not present as someone who gets stage fright. “I will look full of bravado and look pompous and look smug and do these grand gestures, which have worked for me because they put my face on the poster and people still buy tickets,” he said. “But actually what’s happening is I feel like the opposite of that all the time, most of the time.”
While it may be difficult for him to perform live, Williams says that the condition is improving. “It’s getting better,” he said. “I would say it’s gotten better from 45 onwards. This particular tour that I’m now in, I’m very pleased to say, for me, is that I’m dead excited to do my show that I’m doing tomorrow and I was excited to do one last week.”
The 51-year-old is not the only famous singer who struggles with the neurological condition. Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi in 2023 had to take a break from music after his tics prevented him from completing a performance at Glastonbury. Billie Eilish also recounted being affected by Tourette syndrome, which she was diagnosed with when she was 11. “If you film me for long enough, you’re going to see a lot of tics,” she told David Letterman on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction in 2022.
Williams credits his wife, Ayda Field Williams, for helping adjust his perspective on performing live, highlighting how she emphasized how lucky he is to perform for a living and how he may not always have the chance to play stadiums.
“And in that moment, thinking about maybe never being able to do it again because of waning popularity or death or whatever it is, in that moment, it just changed my perception,” he says. “But 80,000 people never changed my opinion about me.”
Before the show, Willson was feeling hopeful. “It’s nice that we don’t have to carry the load by ourselves in this one,” she said. “Finneas is going to go on and make more solo records, as will I. But we have this special little moment where we can lean on each other—and I want more of that.”
Later on, O’Connell described the genesis of the album in a slightly more poetic way. “Ashe and I have all these ghost stories about New York,” he told the audience. “We kept on telling them to each other, and that’s how this album came together.”
The Favors, which includes bandmates David Marinelli and Ricky Gourmet, are touring, but it’s a strictly limited engagement. On September 18, they played a show on the stage attached to Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, and they’ll be playing one final show as a part of the Austin City Limits festival this weekend. The rarity of the moment was reflected in the night’s crowd: O’Connell shouted out his longtime girlfriend Claudia Sulewski—his fiancée as of last week—and his parents, Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell, who were all in the audience. The VIP platform was full of the band’s friends, including actors Skyler Gisondo and Juliana Joel.
O’Connell and Willson were comfortable onstage, switching positions from center stage to behind the piano and sipping from their personal cocktails. “Can I take my shoes off?” Willson asked with a laugh, before slipping them off. The night ended with a tandem dance, choreographed in advance.
Clever, elegant, and cautious, Giorgio Armani arranged for the muse-turned-activist to meet his architect. Three years later, on Boulevard Saint-Germain, he unveiled his Armani Casa boutique, offering Japanese lanterns in Murano glass, boxes covered in shagreen, furniture in iroko wood, or upholstered in parchment. His businesses are still there, and the Michelin-starred restaurant bearing his name is now one of the best Italian restaurants in Paris.
It has to be said that the couturier-entrepreneur, the first to launch into the lifestyle spaces that all his competitors eventually emulated, sensed the moods of the city since he first got to know it.
“In the 1970s and early 1980s, haute couture was in decline,” he said. “Those of us who worked in ready-to-wear were resolutely opposed to it. But I remember some breathtaking Saint Laurent shows that left a lasting impression on me, and the wonders that Karl Lagerfeld did at Chanel. And, although far removed from my own aesthetic, I admired the talent and creativity of Christian Lacroix at Patou. It’s thanks to these designers that haute couture has regained its place,” he told us at the time. And when he himself launched himself into this highly codified and magical discipline at the dawn of the new millennium, it was of course in Paris that he decided to show his work.
He swore: “I didn’t decide to go into haute couture on a whim. I had an established, demanding clientele, and many women were asking me for more exclusive, personalized pieces. The next logical step was to create a collection.”
Paris opened its arms to him, though the relationship between Armani and the city had its occasional friction over half a century, such as the 1998 fashion show at Place Saint-Sulpice, to which the 1,500 guests were denied access for “security reasons.” La Reppublica thundered “Paris ‘expels’ Italy,” and Le Monde wrote of “the affront to Giorgio Armani.” The couturier took his revenge in a series of interview in the media, but it did nothing, in the end, to dent his love affair with the capital, where his couture is showcased in the most important addresses on both shores. “I’ve had the privilege of exhibiting my creations in exceptional places, from the Italian Embassy to the Petit Palais.”
