Stunning Rainbow Paints NYC Sky

Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge in Bryant Park

Memo from NYC: Fuck Greg Abbott!

Much has happened in the last few years but cast your mind back to the halcyon days of 2022. Here's something that happened to NYC thanks to the now-defeated Governor of Texas (courtesy of AI Overview):

Texas Governor Greg Abbott began busing migrants from Texas to New York City in August 2022 as part of a political strategy to protest federal border policies and relieve resource-strained Texas border towns. 

• Origins: Texas launched its migrant busing program in April 2022 (initially sending buses to Washington, D.C.) before adding New York City and other self-declared sanctuary cities. 
  
  
• Arrivals: By late 2023, Texas had transported tens of thousands of migrants to New York City, placing heavy strains on local homeless shelters, social services, and city resources.
  
  
• Justification: Governor Abbott defended the initiative—stating during interviews like one on Politico that federal immigration policies are to blame—and arguing that New York City's right-to-shelter laws and policies made it an appropriate destination. 
  
  
• Rejection: New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials sharply criticized the transports as a "cruel" political stunt that overwhelmed local intake and shelter infrastructure.

It was a cynical game played by an evil man who used desperate human beings as Poker chips. New York City was able to handle it (of course we did, even with Eric Adams as mayor) but it was a sick attempt to fuck with our city and do us harm.

Well ... karma is sweet! 

The Governor fucked with NYC and now he's been fucked back! He becomes the first Republican governor of Texas to lose in over 40 years. He's been humiliatingly defeated by a young Latina woman -- ouch!

So he can go straight to hell, a defeated, disgraced failure.

Don't fuck with NYC!

The Joe Franklin Show in 1986

Forty years ago Joe Franklin was the King of Late Night NYC television. Sure, there was Johnny and Dave but Joe was our hometown guy. 

Take this walk down memory lane to 1986, when Joe got all kinds of oddballs and legends on his 1 AM show. 

Patrick Stewart RIP

When the alert popped up on my phone a few days ago that Patrick Stewart had died, I felt nothing. I put my phone down and ignored it. I couldn't, didn't, and still don't want to believe that this giant talent who enriched the childhoods of so many of my generation (and the "next generation"!) was gone. It felt impossible, cruel, bizarre. I hoped it wasn't true.

But sadly it is.

It's probably hard to understand, in this era of streaming and overwhelming "content", how it exciting it was to sit down in front of the TV at 7 PM on a Saturday night to get a new episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (I made my mom plan dinner around it). The amazing writing and cast was, of course, "captained" by Jean-Luc Picard, played brilliantly by Patrick Stewart. The way he portrayed Picard's quiet, determined, steady leadership was incredible -- and that is why he became so popular with Trekkies and non-Trekkies a like. He was the kind of leader who wish (especially nowadays) we could always have.

Of course, Stewart's career spanned a lot more than Star Trek. There were the X-Men movies, other movies (including a hilarious cameo in LA Story), and his extensive stage career (lots of Shakespeare and more). And for my money, he appeared in two of the greatest BBC mini-series ever made -- the 1970s Fall of Eagles (as Lenin) and I, Claudius (as the evil Sejeanus). 

In 1992 I saw him on stage when he did his wonderful one-man stage show of A Christmas Carol. I'll never forget how we came out on the bare stage, holding up a big edition of the book, and boomed in his memorable voice "Marley was dead ... as a doornail." And for the next two hours he gave a powerful, beautiful telling of the legendary classic.

Almost 20 years later I went to an event in the WNYC Green Space where he talked about his life and career. It was a wonderful thing to see him talk about about it. It also turned out that he was planning to move to Brooklyn -- which he did, eventually getting a brownstone in Park Slope.

And finally, in 2014, I saw him and Ian McKellen in the 2014 Broadway production of Waiting for Godot. It was great, and I blogged about it at the time.

There's so much more I could write about Stewart's wide-spanning cultural impact -- from Shakespeare to the multiplexes -- but, instead, just watch some of his work and you'll more than understand.

RIP Captain.