Spike Lee Lands in Cannes, Reminding the Planet That America Still Can’t Sit Still By the time the Mediterranean sun had begun its daily assault on the Croisette, Spike Lee was already holding court outside the Palais, red-capped, gold-rimmed shades glinting like a warning flare. The occasion was ostensibly the Cannes premiere of his latest…
STEVE BUSCEMI: THE ONLY THING HOLDING THE PLANET TOGETHER by our man in the field, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism Dateline: Somewhere over the Atlantic, where the in-flight Wi-Fi is patchy and the world below is on fire in at least four time zones. A curious thing happened at last week’s G-7 “emergency cultural summit” (a…
Mark Hamill, the Man Who Weaponized Nostalgia and Accidentally Became the Internet’s Guilt-Free Dad By Our Correspondent in Low-Earth Orbit Look up at the right moment—somewhere between the malfunctioning Chinese booster and Elon’s latest swarm of broadband pigeons—and you’ll see him: the lone Jedi emoji, orbiting the planet like a sarcastic satellite. Mark Hamill, age…
Wisconsin Lottery: Where Dairyland Dreams Meet the Global Delusion of Getting Rich Without Actually Doing Anything By Our Man in Geneva, Still Recovering from the Last Davos After-Party MADISON—From the air, Wisconsin looks like a polite green doily laid over North America’s midriff, all silos, supper clubs, and the occasional cow wondering why the grass…
The Tennessee Lottery: A Very American Miracle, Exported and Deconstructed By Our Man in Somewhere With Better Odds NASHVILLE—Somewhere between the neon crucifix of a Broadway honky-tonk and the beeping heartbreak of a gas-station scratcher, the Tennessee Lottery is quietly staging its own version of Manifest Destiny. From the outside, it looks like yet another…
Mile-High Mirage: How a Rocky Mountain Scratch Card Became a Global Parable By the time the Colorado Lottery’s latest Powerball billboard flickered to life above Denver International—a smiling elk promising life-changing jackpots to anyone who can read English and ignore basic statistics—three continents were already taking notes. From Singapore’s Marina Bay to Lagos’s Balogun Market,…
Drew Gilbert and the Global Theater of Minor-League Outrage By Diego “Don’t-Call-Me-Diego” Marquez, International Sports Misanthrope On the surface, Drew Gilbert is simply a 5’9″ outfielder with a swing prettier than most Instagram filters and a temper shorter than a TikTok attention span. Yet from the vantage point of a press box that smells faintly…
Power, like cheap tequila, is most potent just before it makes you sick. From the marble corridors of Brussels to the fluorescent-lit war rooms of Beijing, the world’s sharpest minds are busy proving that axiom daily, usually while someone else foots the bar tab. Consider the United Nations Security Council on any given Tuesday: five…
The World’s Most Democratic Tax on Hope By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between the 7-Eleven and the Edge of Reason It was 8:03 p.m. in Madrid when Carlos, a civil servant who hasn’t seen a raise since fax machines were chic, forked over his last two euros for “El Gordo” Christmas tickets. Twelve time zones away,…
Rosie O’Donnell, the Human Rorschach Test No One Asked For By our correspondent in the cheap seats of the global amphitheater PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and the Hudson, the name “Rosie O’Donnell” has become a kind of international litmus paper, turning one color for Americans who still think Twitter is a town square, another for…
South America: A Continent That Forgot to Read the Global Memo Dave’s Locker International Desk – Friday, 07:14 UTC RIO DE JANEIRO—While the rest of the planet was busy optimizing supply chains, South America appears to have been stuck in the longest cigarette break in recorded history. Somewhere between the Andes and the Atlantic, an…
Jessica Sanchez, the Filipino-Mexican-American vocal firecracker who once turned American Idol’s stage into an emergency-room triage for eardrums, has resurfaced—this time not as a contestant, but as a geopolitical Rorschach test. From Manila’s karaoke bars to Mexico City’s plaza loudspeakers to the algorithmic void of global streaming, Sanchez is less a singer now and more…
