
A canceled radio host and his wife flee to Europe. What could go wrong?
When we first meet Reuben and Cecilie, the couple at the center of 'Something Rotten,' Andrew Lipstein's third novel, they're doing what a lot of 30-somethings in Brooklyn are no doubt dreaming about as you read these words: leaving for an extended stay in Europe.
Cecilie, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, is taking belated parental leave so the couple and their infant son can stay with her mother in Copenhagen, where Cecilie grew up. She hands off her latest story to a smarmy male colleague who she's sure is plotting to usurp her status as the star reporter on her beat. Reuben is a stay-at-home dad, ground down by the never-ending demands of caring for a baby and ruminating on a very public humiliation — once a big-deal NPR host, Reuben was recently canceled, his reputation so toxic that he can't even get an entry-level audio job.

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Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Today's NYT Strands Puzzle: Hints, Spangram And Answers For Wednesday, June 11th
Today's NYT Strands hints and answers Looking for Tuesday's Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here: It's Odin's Day, smackdab in the middle of the week, and we have words to uncover. Another Strands to delight and frustrate us. These are always the hardest right at the get-go, when everything is just a jumble of letters. Sometimes, even when the theme is obvious, it's just hard to find that first word. Other times, the words practically leap off the page. Today's puzzle was the former. I struggled to get started but once I did, everything fell nicely into place. Strands is the newest game in the New York Times' stable of puzzle games. It's a fun twist on classic word search games. Every day we're given a new theme and then tasked with uncovering all the words on the grid that fit that theme, including a spangram that spans two sides of the board. One of these words is the spangram which crosses from one side of the grid to another and reveals even more about the day's theme. Spoilers ahead. Read on for today's theme and some hints to help you uncover today's words. Instead of giving you the first two letters of each word, today I'm giving out three hints instead of two. Today's Theme: If you build it . . . FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Hint: Think 'Gothic' or 'Victorian' Clue: Or Adrian Brody's latest award-winning film. Here are the first two letters of each of today's words: Remember, spoilers ahead! Today's spangram is: ARCHITECTURE Here's the full list of words: Here's the completed Strands grid: Today's Strands As I noted up above, this one took me awhile to get started, but once I'd found DECO and REVIVAL, I was off to the races. BRUTALIST made finding the spangram — ARCHITECTURE — easy enough. The only one that really gave me trouble was BAROQUE, which I just couldn't get my head around for the longest time. If it isn't BAROQUE, don't fix it! How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!


Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Billy Joel tried to kill himself twice before realizing he could channel his sadness into music
Billy Joel's life is awash in revelations these days — some bad, some worse. Last month, the 'Only the Good Die Young' singer-songwriter canceled all his upcoming concerts, revealing he was struggling with a brain disorder that causes a potentially reversible kind of dementia. Then last week, he divulged that he attempted suicide twice in his 20s after falling in love with his bandmate's wife and causing the downfall of the band itself. 'I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a homewrecker,' Joel says (via People) in the first half of the two-part documentary 'Billy Joel: And So It Goes,' which premiered last Wednesday and hits HBO Max in July. 'I was just in love with a woman and I got punched in the nose, which I deserved.' Joel said both he and his friend and Attila bandmate, Jon Small, were upset by what happened while Joel was living with Small and Small's then-wife, Elizabeth Weber. So upset that Attila — a Led Zeppelin-inspired metal band, according to the New York Times — broke up and Joel started boozing, which sent him into a tailspin. 'I had no place to live,' Joel says in the documentary. 'I was sleeping in laundromats, and I was depressed, I think to the point of almost being psychotic. So I figured, 'That's it. I don't want to live anymore.'' He tried twice to end his life in the early 1970s, according to the documentary. First, he took the entire lot of sleeping pills that his sister, then a medical assistant, had given him to help him sleep. That put him in the hospital. 'He was in a coma for days and days and days,' Judy Molinari says in the program. She thought she had killed her brother. Joel says in the doc that he woke up in the hospital still suicidal, hoping to do it 'right' the next time. His sister said he wound up drinking 'lemon Pledge' furniture polish. That time, an unlikely person took him to the hospital: Small, his then-estranged best friend. 'Eventually,' Small says in the documentary, 'I forgave him.' As for those impulses to harm himself, they wound up paying off for Joel after he checked out of a facility he had checked himself into after the second suicide attempt. 'I got out of the observation ward and I thought to myself, you can utilize all those emotions to channel that stuff into music.' Joel reconnected with Weber about a year after that, wrote about her in the 1973 song 'Piano Man,' and married her from then until 1982. Marriages to Christie Brinkley, Katie Lee and current wife Alexis Roderick would follow. The first part of the documentary covers Joel's childhood and runs through his 1982 motorcycle accident, according to the New York Times. He doesn't meet his 'Uptown Girl,' Brinkley, until Part 2.


CNET
3 hours ago
- CNET
Today's NYT Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 11, #1453
Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today's Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today's Wordle puzzle refers to a specific pattern that people seem to either love or hate. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on. Today's Wordle hints Before we show you today's Wordle answer, we'll give you some hints. If you don't want a spoiler, look away now. Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats Today's Wordle answer has no repeated letters. Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels There are two vowels in today's Wordle answer. Wordle hint No. 3: First letter Today's Wordle answer begins with P. Wordle hint No. 4: Letter location The two vowels in today's Wordle answer are next to each other. Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning Today's Wordle answer can refer to a fabric with a tartan pattern. TODAY'S WORDLE ANSWER Today's Wordle answer is PLAID. Yesterday's Wordle answer Yesterday's Wordle answer, June 10, No. 1452 was TAFFY. Recent Wordle answers June 6, No. 1448: EDIFY June 7, No. 1449: REUSE June 8, No. 1450: LEASE June 9, No. 1451: BOARD