Normally I don't like ‘fun' Shakespeare. But this play won me over.
The prospect of sitting through 'fun' Shakespeare — subversive Shakespeare, transposed Shakespeare — makes my skin break out. It sends me, mentally, straight back to high school. It's redolent of the 'cool' English teacher desperate to show he can hang, the drama club kids thrusting their hips to prove that they get double entendre. Such productions seem weirdly proud of themselves and weirdly embarrassed about their source material. Even as they're being pandered to, audience members grow fidgety and sullen.
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New York Times
17 minutes ago
- New York Times
Jon Stewart to Los Angeles: ‘Is Your City Ever Not on Fire?'
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. Fire and I.C.E. Things have been tense for days in Los Angeles, where President Trump deployed the military in response to protests against immigration raids. Jon Stewart called the situation 'the very predictable result of a liberal city, reliant on an immigrant population, colliding with a heavy-handed MAGA migrant-trawling operation looking to hit its quota of brown Pokémen. Gotta catch 'em all!' 'Is it too much to ask to have one weekend where I don't have to Google 'when count as martial law'?' — STEPHEN COLBERT 'It's an explosive situation, on the cusp of federalism vs. states' rights, border control vs. due process, terrifyingly militarized sweeps vs. hard-working people in local communities, the United States Marines vs. the Postmates guy who brought you an egg sandwich.' — JON STEWART 'Trump's actions are shocking because this troop deployment is in defiance of the California government. Normally, the governor is in charge of the National Guard, and in Los Angeles, local and state authorities had not sought help in dealing with the protests. So nobody asked for this, and it's only going to make things worse. And in Los Angeles, there's a word for that: 'Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.'' — STEPHEN COLBERT 'There has been some pelting of police and I.C.E. agents with rocks and garbage. For instance, people began throwing objects at law enforcement in a protest that started when demonstrators took over the 101, though locals were quick to point out they should've taken over the 405 to the 5, saved at least 10 minutes on the road to fascism.' — STEPHEN COLBERT 'Also, if you're against property damage and protesters flying un-American flags, you guys would've hated Jan. 6.' — SETH MEYERS 'And quick question for those of you who live in that area: Is your city ever not on fire? Whether you win a basketball championship, a World Series championship, whether you have an exploding piñata gender reveal gone wrong — congratulations, it's a boy and an evacuation! — or you're just protesting the Trump administration's expanded deportation raids, L.A. continues to be our most flammable city.' — JON STEWART The Punchiest Punchlines (The Long Breakup Edition) 'Everybody's still talking about Trump's feud with Elon Musk, and apparently, Trump is considering getting rid of the Tesla that he bought a few months ago — although that's the same feeling every Tesla owner has.' — JIMMY FALLON 'Giving up the car makes sense. I mean, after a breakup, you always get rid of things that remind you of your ex.' — JIMMY FALLON 'I wouldn't worry. The dude has plenty of breakups. You know his policy — don't cry because it's over, frown because it happened.' — SETH MEYERS Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
18 minutes ago
In London, the fox has its own ambulance service when it needs help
PADDOCK WOOD, England -- The injured fox is cornered in a cage, teeth bared and snarling at the woman trying to help it. Nicki Townsend is unfazed. Wearing only rubber gloves and an outfit suitable for a yoga class, she approaches with soothing words. 'All right, baby," she coos as she deftly drapes a towel over his head, grabs him by the scruff of his neck, scoops up his wounded legs and moves him to a clean cage. It's not the way her day typically begins, but there's nothing routine about rescuing foxes. 'You can never predict what you're going to arrive at,' Townsend said. While not as visible as phone boxes or double-decker buses, the red fox is a fixture in London, a city not known for its wildlife. But living on the streets, alleys and back gardens of a dense urban environment can be rough and when foxes need help, they have their own ambulance service — and Townsend may be on her way. The foxes didn't invade London so much as adapt and expand their range inward as the city spread to their habitat in the 1930s and suburbs grew. But people and the bushy-tailed member of the canine family have not always lived in harmony, and the species has admirers and adversaries. For everyone enchanted seeing a fox trotting nonchalantly down their street at dusk or basking in a sunny backyard, there are plenty who see them as pests. They poop where they like, tear into garbage and the vixens in heat let out terrifying shrieks in the dead of winter when attracting a mate. 'It's like Marmite with foxes,' Townsend said, referring to the food spread that is an acquired and divisive taste. 'You either love them or hate them.' The divide between the two camps led Trevor Williams to found what became The Fox Project nearly 35 years ago. Once a bass player in the rock group Audience that opened for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Williams had been active in the campaign to stop fox hunting when he redirected his protection efforts to the city, where foxes were once routinely killed. 'Because of the myths that have occurred over the years, there's still a lot of suspicion about what foxes might be,' Williams said. 'You know, they're going to bite the baby, they're going to eat the cat, they're going to run away with your husband.' The project has since grown from providing information on deterring foxes to rescuing 1,400 a year, including 400 cubs, though only about half survive to be released. There are estimated to be 15,000 foxes in London. The project covers a swath of south London and its leafy suburbs while other organizations not devoted solely to foxes handle other parts of the city. While the omnivores survive on small animals, bugs and berries in the wild, they favor easily scavenged leftovers in the city and handouts that make them more dependent on humans. Their main urban menaces are cars, getting snagged in soccer nets or getting stuck in tight spaces. In their effort to get free, they often get nasty abrasions that can become infected. Many also suffer from mange, a parasitic infestation that leads to all kinds of problems. Townsend pilots her VW Caddy on city streets, highways and narrow lanes that roll through lush hills, responding to calls about injured or ill foxes or cubs that have lost their mothers. She's seen a bit of everything since her first humbling call 2 1/2 years ago when the supposedly injured fox bolted. 'In my inexperience, I chased after him, which is comical because you're never going to outrun a fox,' she said. 'I just remember he ran very fast and I looked silly running after him.' Despite many challenging situations — she once managed to rescue a fox that lost its footing atop a fence and ended upside down at eye level with its paw lodged between boards — she's only been bitten once. Her van carries the distinctly musky scent of foxes. The odor becomes unpleasant when an anxious passenger in a litter of cubs relieves itself enroute to being delivered to a foster care pen where they will stay until being released in the wild. 'Feel free to open the window,' said Townsend, who is accustomed to the stench. 'This is a stinky job." On a recent day, she was dispatched to meet a heartbroken couple who found a cub with a puncture wound collapsed on their back lawn. 'We thought he was asleep at first, so we went to go and have a close look because we love them," Charlotte English said. 'Then he just didn't move, so we knew something was wrong.' That cub had to be put to sleep, as did the adult Townsend transferred at the start of her shift. Cubs that recover are socialized in packs of five until they mature and are then released in a rural location while the adults are freed in the neighborhoods where they were found. Given a second chance, it's not clear how well the foxes fare, because they are rarely tracked. A 2016 study in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science found that rehabilitated foxes were more likely to behave as if they had been displaced when returned to their original territory. They were tracked wandering farther away, potentially exposing them to more traffic and greater stress. 'It is a gap in the knowledge and there's an assumption that when you release them, they thrive and I think that that assumption needs to be challenged more,' said Bryony Tolhurst, a University of Brighton honorary research fellow and lead author of the study. For Townsend, fox deaths are offset by the joy of seeing little ones venture into the unknown or an adult darting into a neighborhood it instantly recognizes. 'Sometimes they look back and people like to romanticize that they're saying 'thank you,'" she said. "They're just making sure we're not chasing after them.'
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tyler Perry Slams Erasure Of Black History In Politically Charged BET Speech
Tyler Perry wasted no time tearing into Trump's administration and the divisive state of America during the BET Awards Monday night. After sharing a brief story about his son, the billionaire media mogul launched into an impassioned State of the Union-esque address to condemn what has been happening in the country as of late — specifically with the erasure of Black history. 'I want you to pay attention to— don't miss this,' he began onstage. 'They are removing our books from libraries. They are removing our stories and our history. They are removing our names from government buildings as if someone wants to erase our footprints.' 'Because what we need to understand is that if our children don't know our history, they won't know our power,' Perry added. The filmmaker pointed his message to Black viewers, telling them, 'The truth of the matter [is], it's impossible to erase our footprints, because we left them on water. What I mean by that is, we were snatched from our homeland, bought across the ocean and left footprints all the way to America.' Perry continued his history lesson, nodding to the sanitation of African American history in museums and calling out American tragedies like the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, where several businesses were famously burned down on Oklahoma's Black Wall Street in an effort to destroy the thriving community. 'So, this is not the time to be silent,' Perry continued to the audience. 'This is not the time to give up. This is the time to dig in and keep leaving footprints everywhere you go.' He even took a moment to brag about how he's 'made more Black millionaires than any studio in this city combined.' 'Because I'm making footprints,' he added. Perry concluded his powerful speech, saying, 'So I don't care if you're struggling, if you're trying to make it, if you're trying to build a business. If you have a dream, keep making footprints. Don't let anybody stop you. You can do it.' Perry isn't the only star who took hold of the BET Awards spotlight to deliver a politically charged message. Doechii, who won Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, used her acceptance speech to blast the 'ruthless attacks' from Trump's administration after it deployed military forces on Los Angeles protests over the weekend over immigration raids. 'Trump is using military forces to stop a protest,' she said. 'And I want y'all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic rights to protest, the military is deployed against us.' 'I feel it's my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people,' the rapper added. 'For Black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people of Gaza, we all deserve to live in hope and not in fear, and I hope we stand together, my brothers and my sisters, against hate. And we protest against it.' Doechii Blasts Trump's 'Ruthless' Deployment Of Military Against Protesters In BET Awards Speech Kevin Hart Jokes About Diddy Without Even Saying His Name The Complete List Of 2025 BET Awards Winners
