Since her marriage of more than 20 years ended in divorce, Amy, a 62-year-old Texan, has had a couple of committed relationships and a handful of sexual partners. Amy is currently seeing a man she described as a “friend with benefits,” but it’s nothing she takes too seriously. What she does take seriously is talking…
Good morning. The Kentucky Derby is on Saturday, the first since last season’s spectacularly sad and difficult outing. I’m about as good of a handicapper as I am a heart surgeon, but here’s my bet: Fierceness, trained by the horseman Todd Pletcher and ridden by the four-time Derby winner John Velazquez. I’ll tip my mint…
The architect Philip Johnson’s Glass House, a rectangular glass-and-steel residence set on a grassy shelf above a wooded bluff in New Canaan, Conn., has epitomized a certain East Coast ideal of midcentury elegance since its completion in 1949. Before becoming an architect at age 37, Johnson ran the architecture department at MoMA, and the spare,…
To become a city’s coolest new neighborhood, there are certain prerequisites: a crop of cafes that toe the line between cozy and snobbish, chefs combining the innovative with the Instagrammable, and shops so sincere that they are doomed to close when rents rise, which they inevitably will. But then it must also have quirks. Chacarita,…
First, there was the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos biopic (complete with an Oscar-nominated song). Then came “Tetris”; “Air,” about Nike Air Jordan sneakers; “BlackBerry”; and “Barbie.” It is, in other words, a golden age for product-origin-story movies. The latest is “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story,” a satirical history that Jerry Seinfeld has expanded from his stand-up act….
A year ago, Jonathan Grahm, a chocolatier, visited Paris and noticed the ubiquity of lavender in French soaps and lotions. He wanted to add a floral-leaning chocolate to his lineup at Compartés, a confectionery shop in Los Angeles established in 1950, and figured that lavender was his way in. Mr. Grahm harnessed his inspiration into…
Even leading experts in vaccine science have run up against disbelief and ambivalence. Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
As a girl, Sofia Coppola liked to melt down her lipsticks, mixing colors and consistencies to make a tint that conformed to her aesthetic ideal. She was after the look of Tess, the titular character in Roman Polanski’s 1979 film adaptation of the novel “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” portrayed by Nastassja Kinski. In one scene,…
On Tuesday, Google’s employees gathered for an all-hands meeting named T.G.I.F. These companywide meetings are rarely held on Fridays these days, but the name has stuck. Executives shared highlights from a recent earnings report and cloud-computing conference, and warned workers against taking disruptive actions in the wake of internal protests against a cloud-computing contract with…
The first high school reunion I attended was held in a basement reached by a rickety elevator. After I got there, I hung out nearby to see the other arrivals. This turned out to be a mistake. The elevator became a direct portal to my past: Who would step out next? I grew so anxious…
