A book that flows like a river after a spring thaw -- naturally, unstoppably, irresistibly. Few writers can match Stuart in mapping the idiosyncracies of loneliness, or the feints and evasions of being gay in a claustrophobic, hostile community.

An accidental convergence of advertising and editorial on my laptop screen.

Our apples bring all the deers to our yard. And woodchucks and rabbits and one stumbling bear, who looks so alone and dispossessed it breaks my heart. The fauna of a crazy August.

No, no, this is terrible that he died so abruptly, so early. Few songwriters matched him in capturing that melancholy sweet spot where "what if?" throbbed oh so gently. Glen Hansard gave ambivalence a melody that somehow defines how we remember what eluded us, the things that got away.

Oh dear. I have "Odyssey" burnout, and I haven't even seen the damn movie yet. Sometimes flooding the zone (the Times had 27 stories on it last time I counted) can drown anticipation.

These are my most cherished sunglasses. Yes, they are Ray-Ban Wayfarers, the everyday spectacles of millions. But unlike those of recent years, these have no brandname on the glass. I hate wearing labels, especially above my eyes. Bought new, they are now very vintage, like me.

For the record, I counted more than 30 stories within the last week in the New York Times on the wedding of a pop star and a football star. I feel sure there are more to come.

Farewell to Bobbi Queen, a fashion editor and fashion plate without peer, whom I met at Women's Wear Daily and who continued to illuminate my life with the startling sparkle of fireworks. Her style was as incisive and instinctive as her wit, her curiosity as big as the world.

And suddenly, we're stuck in the opening number of Act Two in "Sunday in the Park with George."

Happy 100th birthday to that laughing pioneer Mel Brooks, who changed the course not just of screen comedy but of the Broadway musical. His taboo-busting stage version of "The Producers" parodied with passion, tickling and hugging a classic genre into a state of giggly rapture.

I mean, look at that sky.

Few performances capture the anesthetizing, quiet confusion of deep grief as artfully as Quincy Tyler Bernstine does in Bubba Weiler's "Well, I'll Let You Go." This soft-spoken drama, at Studio Seaview, sucker punches you, hard, when you don't expect it. Rather like grief itself.

I live among shades of green.

I wake up to discover that two of my favorite artists have won Tonys. Lesley Manville and Laurie Metcalf. Each -- Manville in "Oedipus" and Metcalfe in "Death of a Salesman" -- rendered moments of angry, incandescent pain that rank among the truest, most searing acting I've seen. Brava and brava!

While I wish everyone involved many broken legs, I will not be watching the Tony Awards this year. Once they leave CBS, I will return to my usual cheering section.

This very faded picture was taken around the time I realized that I was who I was, as it were. Though I knew I would be keeping a secret for a while, I didn't feel cursed. I felt confident, for the first time, that I was going to be just fine. So it has proved. Happy Pride Month.

This weekend, I learned the word for a condition I have lived with since childhood, and it is good to at last have a name for it. That's abibliophobia, the fear of being without a book.

This is essential for anyone interested in the state of theater and of human identity in the age of perpetually mutating self. Kip Williams rediscovers Genet's "The Maids," at St. Ann's Warehouse, as a prophecy for an era when existential uncertainty becomes public performance.

I admit I'm kind of excited about this. I love this play, an expertly tailored, old-fashioned family drama with a new-fashioned heart. And Dreyfus in a part she can make a meal of? And Ed Harris? And Janney and Rabe? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/t...

Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Other Desert Cities’

nytimes.com

A book that was made for a rainy Memorial Day weekend.

Farewell to Rex Reed, one of the rare critics to acquire something like movie star status. (In fact, he was the man who became Raquel Welch in "Myra Breckenridge.") He was also the first writer to attack me in print. I was thrilled. It felt more like a baptism than a slap.

At LaGuardia departure lounge, where I encounter a frequent flyer who seems destined to take off long before I do.

I am so pleased that this won the Pulitzer. Bess Wohl's "Liberation" hit me with a direct emotional impact I hadn't experienced since the "The Normal Heart" revival. It felt immediate and personal, and I saw my mother's life and my sister's life with a vividness that stung.

And today, the rose-breasted grosbeak arrived.

When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear....

It's not just the fashion industry that has changed since the original "The Devil Wears Prada." Could anyone twenty years ago have imagined Meryl Streep participating in the kind of exhausting, storm-the-beaches, flood-the-zone press campaign that has attended the sequel?

Every morning, I go to the window and, everywhere I look, the world has gotten greener -- I mean, deep, explosive, all-pervasive green. Hey, we have arrived in the land of Oz!

Taylor Swift breaking down the craft of songwriting -- the origins, process and aftermath -- in the New York Times is my favorite interview in ages. Bonus: It's a guide on how to stay sane while famous. Lucid, funny, self-aware and so artful and illuminating in its use of detail.

It's the knife-like voice of the dead girl, sung by Vilma Jaa, that I can't get out of my head this morning. That and the subliminal chorus that floats that seems to have its roots in your own memory. Simon Stone's Met production of Kaija Saariaho's "Innocence" is a night at the opera like no other.

I had a swell weekend of revitalized (and revitalizing) theater - on Broadway, of all places: "Death of a Salesman," "Becky Shaw" and "Cats: The Jellicle Ball." Each, in its way, testifying to how theater can reframe the world. Like Orban's defeat, a reason to hope this spring.