Today is Thursday, July 3, 2025. Elliot and I spent almost 12 hours out painting the town, as it were, beginning with having breakfast at the Ukrainian restaurant Veselka on West 9th Street and 2nd Avenue, then seeing the recently opened Jurassic World Rebirth at the Regal Theatre, on Union Square. From there, we made our way to Ninth Avenue and 43rd Street where we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, Nizza, at 5:15. What was quite marvelous about the dinner was not just the delicious food – I had the pappardelle fungi, with no appetizer, while Elliot had two appetizers – eggplant rollatini and grilled asparagus. We eschewed dessert to have something at Amy’s Bread, up on 46th Street and 9th Avenue.

Now to the play we saw, Angry Alan, starring John Krasinski in a one-man show, even though toward the end of the 85-minute production, we are treated to a young actor who portrays the title character’s son, Joe. The play is a tour de force for Krasinksi, who acted in The Office years ago and played with his real-life wife, Emily Blunt, in those Quiet Place horror films. The play is written by British playwright Penelope Skinner and is directed by Sam Gold. The theme of the play is this Midwestern character’s descent into a rabbit hole of internet hucksters who talk a good game of male victimhood at the hands of dominant women in our society. Krasinksi portrays Roger McLeod, a 45-year-old, divorced man, with a 14-year-old, and a new girlfriend, Courtney, whom we never see. He’s lost a good job working for AT&T and is now working as the dairy manager of a Kroger supermarket. Like many men his age and social status, he is struggling to pay child support and be more of a dad to his withdrawn son, Joe.

At the beginning, Roger, as played by Krasinksi, seems like any other middle-class average Joe, but as he talks about this online guru called “Angry Alan,” his tone gets progressively angrier and angrier. You see, this Angry Alan writes extensively about how women have exceeded men in today’s world and blames everything wrong with the world with something called the gynocracy (literal domination of society by women). Thus the real theme of the play is now emerging: how men can fall under the sway of the manosphere, an online community drawn together by an assortment of grievances that they broadly blame on the excesses of feminism rather than look inward to themselves. Though there are statistics thrown out in the play that are representative of the male sex these days like the shrinking share of college degrees held by men and the growing number of suicides attributed to men. These facts are irrefutable, but they have more to do with men still not being able to express their feelings more openly than women.

Krasinski’s tone throughout is unrelentingly sunny, even as Roger journeys deeper down the rabbit hole, consuming news exclusively from sources run by Angry Alan and even missing a child-support payment so he can purchase a ticket to Alan’s seminar in Detroit. Roger is proud of his “Gold Donor” status as an attendee at this seminar after sending Angry Alan more money beyond the price of admission, money that Roger probably can’t afford.

The affable tone displayed by Krasinski as Roger suddenly darkens as his son appears toward the end of the play to admit something that has consumed him for a long time. It’s Roger’s typical male reaction to his son’s confession that exposes the male toxicity that lies under Roger’s initial amiable exterior. I won’t mention what Joe tells his enraged father; I recommend you see this play just for Krasinski’s stellar acting. The play runs until August 3.

Oh, the newest installment of the Jurassic dinosaur series was just adequate. I miss the stars that populated the original series like Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill. This latest installment stars Scarlett Johansson, my fave Jonathan Bailey (he from Fellow Travelers), Mahershala Ali, and Rupert Friend as the prototypical bad guy. The film follows a group of adventurers who travel to the remote regions of the equator where most of the remaining dinosaurs now hold sway. The expedition is led by troubled mercenary Zora (Johansson), paleontologist Henry (Jonathan Bailey), and Martin (Rupert Friend) who hires the first two to acquire blood samples from three representative dinosaurs supposedly for a cure for heart disease. Also in tow is Zora’s friend Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and a family that gets caught up in the mayhem accompanying the expedition to the island.

Halfway through the film, I was able to predict which characters would be chomped into bits by the big, bad dinosaurs, so the film lacks any serious tension or suspense. I just enjoyed seeing one gay actor (Bailey) portraying a real he-man adventurer. My recommendation is that you wait to see this unimpressive Jurassic entry on a streaming service.

The big news that I was terrified of hearing was that Diaper Don’s “big, beautiful bill” was passed in the House today. I hate Dump so much that it hursts! I do hope that this signals all repugnicans’ death warrants in terms of their careers in 2026. I read that there were only two repugnicans who defected and voted no. The roll call was very tight, 218-214. I applaud Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries who delayed voting for this “death” bill by holding the floor for more than eight hours with a record-breaking speech against the bill. Kudos, Mr. Jeffries! Now Democrats have one role to play until the midterms: to denounce the effects of this terrible bill and what it will mean to average Americans across the country. An online article in today’s Daily News lays out the horrible reality of what’s in the bill: $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the uberrich, some $350 billion in “national security,” which I take it to include more fucking money for ICE, nothing else, funds to develop Diaper Don’s “Golden Dome” defensive system, $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.

“The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.”

If you think this is a big, beautiful bill after this true accounting of the effects of this bill on mostly everyone excluding the billionaire set, then you’re stupider than I thought.

How any repugnican can justify this bill without choking on their own words is beyond me!

As for tomorrow, July 4th, there is no need to celebrate in the land. What is there to celebrate? I ask. As Democrats so direly pointed out, this bill will result in lives lost. “Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would ‘rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors.'”

Even after writing this, I have to say that we have been invited anyway to our Woodmere friends, “Mary” and “Joseph,” for a barbecue tomorrow. This is scheduled for 6.

I’m not sure if I will be writing my blog tomorrow. It all depends on long we stay.

And so it went!

Here is the playbill from today’s play: Angry Alan.