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      White House Correspondents Cancel Comedian Booked for Annual Dinner

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      Here’s another thing getting cut in Washington: comedy.The White House Correspondents’ Association said on Saturday that it canceled a planned performance by Amber Ruffin, the actress and talk-show host, at its annual black-tie dinner on April 26.A monologue by a featured comedian is usually the highlight of the journalists’ soiree. Memorable performances by Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, among other stars, have turned into touchstones of political satire.But amid rocky relations between President Trump and the White House press corps — and numerous efforts by the administration to undermine the news media — the correspondents’ group decided to go in a different direction.“The W.H.C.A. board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year,” the association’s president, Eugene Daniels, wrote to members on Saturday. “At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists.”Representatives of Ms. Ruffin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The announcement was a sharp break from the group’s position in early February, when it trumpeted Ms. Ruffin’s comedic style as “the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”“She has the ability to walk the line between blistering commentary and humor all while provoking her audience to think about the important issues of the day,” Mr. Daniels said in a news release. “I’m thrilled and honored she said yes.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Dyslexic Comedian Walks Into a Recording Booth …

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      Phil Hanley stood in a womb-like studio, psyching himself up to record the final section of his memoir. Peppermint tea, check. Hands in meditation position, check. Sheaf of highlighted, color coded pages printed in extra large type, check.But when Hanley leaned into the microphone to read from “Spellbound,” his candid account of growing up dyslexic, he sounded more like an anxious student than the seasoned comedian he is.He eked out 13 words, then stumbled, exhaling sharply in triplicate, Lamaze style. He tried again, the same sentence with slightly different intonation. Puff, puff, puff. And again, making it through three more words. Puff, puff, puff. On his fourth attempt, Hanley choked up.It was his 60th hour in the booth at his publisher’s office, not counting practice sessions at home. Most authors are at the studio for a fraction of this time; the average recording length for a 7.5 hour audiobook is 15 hours. But because Hanley has severe dyslexia, the process was protracted. And complicated. And emotional.“The most traumatic moments of my life have been having to read out loud,” Hanley said. “I can’t even express how tiring it is to do the audiobook. It feels like chiseling a marble statue with a screwdriver and a broken hammer.”Nevertheless, he was hellbent on reading his own story. What would it say to the dyslexic community if he handed off the mic?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge John Hodgman on Knowingly Mispronouncing Words

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      Once you’ve been corrected, is it OK to keep going?Maggie writes: My sister, cousin and best friend all pronounce the Spelling Bee’s pangram as “pan-a-gram.” I have nicely pointed out their mistake, but they continue to gleefully mispronounce it. They don’t care that they’re wrong. Make them stop.For those who only read this column and then throw the magazine (or their phone) away, I’ll explain. In The Times’s Spelling Bee game, a pangram is a word formed using all seven letters in the puzzle. More generally, a pangram is a sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet, just like this one (if I had included Q, X and Z) does! “Pan-a-gram,” by contrast, means nothing — yet. But the gleefully wrong tend to get their message out a lot faster these days than we snobs, so “panagram” may eventually win a spot in our living dictionary. Until then, I rule in your favor. You should never speak to these people again. As those of us who play it understand: The Spelling Bee is more important than any sister, cousin, friend or thing on earth. More

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      Conan O’Brien’s Oscars Monologue: Little Roasting, No Politics, Very Silly

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      Conan O’Brien brought the bizarre back to Oscar hosting.In a studiously silly (and sniffily) performance that began with the gross-out humor of his emerging out of the body of Demi Moore from “The Substance,” O’Brien evoked some of his delightfully experimental bits from his old late-night show.For winners whose speeches go on too long, he promised to cut to a shot of a game John Lithgow “looking slightly disappointed.” He continued a fun Adam Sandler bit from the Golden Globe Awards. And in a concise joke delivered deftly, he said: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here, but not that badly.”The whole thing had a light touch: little roasting and no politics. The edgiest joke might have been when he promised that no A.I. was used in making the Oscars, before fessing up: “We used child labor.” But you got the sense this punchline mattered less than his follow-up, when Conan added out of nowhere: “We lost little Billy.” Not since David Letterman, the most underrated Oscar host of the modern era, has a monologue been this loopy. More

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      Conan O’Brien Pokes Fun at Top Movies and Stars in Oscars Monologue

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      Conan O’Brien was literally born to host the Oscars.After a pretaped sketch on Sunday in which O’Brien emerged out of the back of Demi Moore, the star of “The Substance,” before turning around to dig into her spine cavern for a lost shoe, the comedian broke into his monologue.He poked fun at many of the show’s nominees, and himself, starting with a list of recent films — “A Complete Unknown,” “A Real Pain,” “Nosferatu” — that he joked he was called on the red carpet. “I think two were fair,” he said.The monologue also razzed Netflix’s 18 nominations (and price increases), the length of “The Brutalist” and the recent controversy about “Emilia Pérez” actress Karla Sofia Gascón’s offensive social media posts.“Little fact for you: ‘Anora’ uses the F-word 479 times,” he said. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofia Gascón’s publicist.”O’Brien also called out best actor nominee Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of the musician Bob Dylan from the stage, and the absence of Dylan himself: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight, but not that badly.”He also riffed on the recent news that Amazon has taken control of the James Bond franchise, joking that it had found its next 007: Amazon’s senior vice president of global affairs, Steve Belsky. “Ladies love him,” O’Brien said. (According to an Amazon corporate website, the real senior vice president and chief of global affairs is David A. Zapolsky.)After a joke about Adam Sandler’s fashion sense, O’Brien suddenly changed tone to address the devastation of the wildfires in Los Angeles, and how an awards show can seem self-indulgent if that context was not addressed. He praised the craftspeople and others behind the camera who devoted their life to film, and how the ceremony was to celebrate their work too.“Even in the face of terrible wildfires and divisive politics, the work, which is what this is about, the work continues,” he said. “For years to come through trauma, and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here.”“I will not,” he continued. “I’m leaving Hollywood to run a bed-and-breakfast in Orlando. And I’d like to see you there.”O’Brien closed his monologue by promising not to waste time, before breaking into a musical number about how he would not waste time, complete with a dancing Deadpool and the sandworm from “Dune: Part Two” playing “Chopsticks” on a piano.“Well, we’re 40 minutes over,” O’Brien joked. More

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      Hair Transplants and the New Male Vanity

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      Last year, I noticed that two comedians I like talked about getting hair transplants. One of them, Matteo Lane, named his special “Hair Plugs & Heartache,” which opens with an extended bit about the transplant experience. I appreciated Lane’s radical (and very funny) transparency regarding the cosmetic enhancement. He talked about the expense, described the 10-hour surgery and the long recovery, and joked about his hair growing in gradually “like a Chia pet.” He’s very happy with the outcome.Lane also talks about why he got his surgery in the United States instead of in Turkey. He said he didn’t want to go through customs with his head swollen like the alien from the movie “Mars Attacks”: “I want to be ugly at home.” Going to Turkey to get a cheaper hair transplant is such a cliché that there’s an entire genre of social media video dedicated to depicting men’s beef carpaccio heads on “Turkish hairlines” flying back to their homes from Istanbul.The British tabloid The Mirror just ran a story about one regular bloke who traveled to Turkey for hair transplant surgery and is quoted as saying that he feels he has “a new lease of life.”This is a marked change from just a few years ago, when men were less forthcoming about getting surgery on their domes. In 2021, my newsroom colleague Alex Williams wrote about the men who got hair transplants during the locked-down days of the pandemic. “There’s still that old stigma, where guys aren’t supposed to worry about how they look and spend a lot of money on their appearance,” one hair transplant recipient said at the time.That stigma is very old, indeed. There’s long been anxiety over hair loss among men, according to Martin Johnes, a professor of modern history at Swansea University in Wales who has researched masculinity, modernity and male baldness. But the stress really started ramping up in the 1930s, when men stopped wearing hats regularly and popular media started valorizing youthfulness more aggressively.In the 1930s, it was considered effeminate to pay too much attention to your appearance yet many of these men still wanted to take action if they were unlucky enough to go bald. They called baldness obscene, a major disaster and, poetically, a favored nightmare. One 30-year-old upholsterer said:I do not care to see bald heads. I can only tolerate them if the owner has a large head, or if his personality will not allow himself to look pitiable.While the bad feelings around baldness clearly aren’t new, talking about those feelings in public is. And hair replacement technology has improved so much in the last couple of decades that transplants look real now — it’s not just snake oil or cheesy infomercials for hair in a can anymore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Life, from New York

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      Our comedy columnist reflects on 50 years of “Saturday Night Live.”Like “Saturday Night Live,” I turn 50 this year. In fact, I was born only one week after its premiere, which means that along with being a comedy revolution, a career launchpad and a pop culture juggernaut, the show is also a good way for me to keep track of time.Every cast represents a different era in my life. I missed the storied original group — including Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin, both of whom will appear on a prime-time 50th anniversary special tonight — as I was busy learning how to walk, talk and eat solid food. And yet its jokes (“It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping”) were repeated in my house enough to make their way into my consciousness.It wasn’t until I was 10 that I stayed up to watch “S.N.L.,” during the strange and spectacular season starring Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest. I was the perfect age to appreciate Martin Short’s Ed Grimley, a giddy, prancing innocent who exuded the nervous energy of childhood. But it was the next hit era, featuring Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks and Dana Carvey, that got me hooked on sketch comedy. The cable-access spoof “Wayne’s World” showed up just after puberty. Perfect timing.Mike Myers and Dana Carvey during a “Wayne’s World” skit in 2015.Dana Edelson/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesJust as teenagers rebel against their parents, “S.N.L.” fans eventually start rolling their eyes at the show. In my 20s, I first indulged in the popular tradition of loudly lamenting that it wasn’t as funny as it used to be. I stopped watching and missed some of the best years of Chris Farley and Adam Sandler. I returned for the Tina Fey era, which ended in my 30s, and became a devoted fan of the cast that featured Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg. In recent years, the perspective and mellowing of middle age have helped me enjoy some less-than-perfect seasons. Yet my kids watch those same episodes with an excited fandom and snorting exasperation that I can no longer muster.The celebration of half a century of “Saturday Night Live” is a major event because the show transcends comedy. More than 26 million people watched its 40th anniversary special. This one feels even more significant, one of the last gasps of the monoculture. “S.N.L.” has been culturally relevant for so long that it’s woven into the background of our lives — continually reinventing itself, always there. The New York Times has tried to capture its impact on the culture in the past few weeks. We’ve singled out the show’s 13 greatest ad parodies, its 38 most important musical moments and 50 catchphrases it has ushered into our vocabulary. I explored how its cast members’ extensive history of breaking character has become an unlikely signature of its sketch comedy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      S.N.L. Is for Me and All the Other Outsiders

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      In December 2019, when my children were in third and fifth grade, I decided to show them a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that, decades before, my three siblings and I had loved: Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn as the Sweeney Sisters singing a Christmas medley at a party. I had trouble finding this particular sketch, but as my kids and I inhaled, via YouTube, a random assortment of other ones from over the years — among them such classics as “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls” and “The Love Toilet” — I inadvertently yet happily created what would become our 2020 hobby, while quarantined in our Minneapolis home. I also welcomed my offspring into a time-honored tradition: watching “S.N.L.” when you’re a little too young for it.I myself began doing this in the mid-80s, in my friend Annie’s attic, when her older brothers introduced us to “Choppin’ Broccoli,” “A Couple of White Guys” and “The Church Lady.” As it happens, “S.N.L.” and I are the same age. I arrived in August 1975, and “S.N.L.” debuted in October. It’s therefore a little brain-scrambling to me that “S.N.L.” is now, with deserved fanfare, celebrating 50 years while I’m not quite 49 and a half, but apparently a TV show’s first season starts immediately, while a human’s first season starts when she turns 1.In any case, when I think of being too young for “S.N.L.” and enjoying it anyway, I don’t exactly mean because of the risqué content. Admittedly, as my family started watching entire episodes in reverse order of their airing — we especially enjoyed the golden age of Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant — my husband and I occasionally fast-forwarded through sketches not because they were crude (bring on “Undercover Office Potty”) but because they were innocence-destroying (the intentionally misogynistic “Guy Who Just Bought a Boat”).But I suspect that for a child watching “S.N.L.,” the joke itself doesn’t necessarily matter. If you’re 8 or 10, you might never even have heard of the politician or cultural trend being mocked. But you still know that you’re watching something funny; the magic of “S.N.L.” is that with its costumes and collaboration and the cast members regularly cracking up themselves and one another, it makes adulthood itself seem fun.My parents had friends and attended and threw parties, but even so, there was something about adulthood that struck me as serious when I was a kid — adults spent their days getting their oil changed, filling out paperwork, going to funerals — and the sheer silliness of “S.N.L.” seemed charmingly, enticingly at odds with that. If you were lucky, perhaps you could build a life around silliness. As it turned out, I did and I didn’t: I’m not a comedian, but as a novelist, I did build a life around making stuff up, reconstituting what the culture offers.Back in Minneapolis, the pandemic dragged on, and eventually my family was joined on our TV-watching couch by a rescue Chihuahua named Weenie. As we all watched episode after episode, it dawned on me that in addition to being a kid’s festive idea of adulthood, “S.N.L.” embodies several other elusive and aspirational ideas: an idea of New York for people who, like me, have never lived there; an idea of having hilarious friends or co-workers instead of annoying ones; an idea of being able to metabolize political instability into biting jokes instead of feeling helpless about it; an idea of glamorous after-parties that we want to want to attend when most of us don’t really want to stay up that late. (Though here I might just mean me. My kids are now teenagers and go to bed after I do. But my family has never watched “S.N.L.” live; we usually watch it on Sunday around 7 p.m.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More