Late in “Pretty Woman”—both the 1990 megahit film and the newly opened Broadway musical—Vivian, a call girl who has been lifted from the squalor of Hollywood Boulevard to the penthouse of the Beverly Wilshire, asks her friend Kit to name Read More …

In an empathic tenor, his eyes loaded with sublime kindness, a public-television star lifts a song of loss to an audience of well-behaved children. The opening line of the tune is “What does it mean to lose a thing you Read More …

On Thursday evening, the White House senior adviser Jared Kushner arrived at the Winder Building, in Washington, D.C., to attend a meeting, reportedly focussing on NAFTA negotiations, at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. As he approached the Read More …

Not long ago, I saw “Bad Reputation,” the new documentary about Joan Jett, and came out of it exhilarated, listening to “I Love Rock ’n Roll” while powering down Sixth Avenue. Jett’s sound—the full-throttle drums, guitar, and vocals—made me feel Read More …

The first jazz album I bought was John Coltrane’s “Interstellar Space.” At the time (I was a teen-ager), I knew almost nothing about jazz, beyond typically clichéd impressions that it was contemplative, grownup music, and people always seemed to be Read More …

Of all the inexplicable events in Genesis, the story of Noah’s nakedness and its consequences stands alone. It’s an easy story to sum up. Noah got drunk and fell asleep naked; his son Ham saw him. Ham told his two Read More …

“Escape at Dannemora” (Showtime) recounts the 2015 prison break at the Clinton Correctional Facility, which ended, after a three-week manhunt, with one escapee dead and the other captured. The prison, located in northernmost New York, is nicknamed Little Siberia, and Read More …

In Boston, in the nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands, several aspects of civic life hung in a kind of stasis, seemingly destined to stretch on forever. The Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series in decades; the local gangster Whitey Bulger Read More …

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart. For those of you who don’t know, H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The “H” stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly Read More …

At the conclusion of “[50/50] Old School Animation,” part of this year’s Under the Radar Festival, at the Public Theatre, I lingered in the lobby, hoping for a little postgame discussion with a friend I’d bumped into before the show. Read More …