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      in Music

      Man Is Sentenced to 21 Years in Shooting of Lady Gaga’s Dog Walker

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      Two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen during the attack in Hollywood last year, during which her dog walker was shot in the chest, the police said.A man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker during a violent robbery last year during which two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen was sentenced on Monday to 21 years in prison, prosecutors said.The man, James Howard Jackson, reached a deal with prosecutors under which he pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder and admitted to inflicting great bodily injury and to “a prior strike,” according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.Mr. Jackson, 20, was immediately sentenced to 21 years in state prison, the district attorney’s office said. “The plea agreement holds Mr. Jackson accountable for perpetrating a coldhearted, violent act and provides justice for our victim,” the office said in a statement.Ryan Fischer, the dog walker who was shot in the chest during the attack on Feb. 24, 2021, in Hollywood, spoke directly to Mr. Jackson in court shortly before Mr. Jackson entered his plea, Rolling Stone reported.“You shot me and left me to die, and both of our lives have changed forever,” Mr. Fischer said, according to Rolling Stone. He added that the shooting led to “lung collapse after lung collapse,” as well as the loss of his career and friendships.Still, Mr. Fischer told Mr. Jackson, according to Rolling Stone: “I do forgive you. With the attack, you completely altered my life. I know I can’t completely move on from the night you shot me until I said those words to you.”It was not immediately clear who Mr. Jackson’s lawyer was.Mr. Jackson was accused of participating in the robbery along with two others, Jaylin White and Lafayette Whaley, who were also charged in the case last year.The area where Lady Gaga’s dog walker was shot and two of her French bulldogs were stolen in Los Angeles last February.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressThe police had said that the robbers, who grabbed the dogs and fled in a car after the shooting, were not targeting the French bulldogs because they belonged to Lady Gaga.Evidence instead suggested that the men knew that the breed was valuable, according to the police. Lady Gaga had offered a $500,000 reward for the safe return of the dogs, which are named Koji and Gustav.Mr. Fischer, who was critically wounded in the shooting, had recalled lying in a pool of blood and holding one of Lady Gaga’s dogs that had not been stolen in the attack.In August, Jaylin White and Mr. Whaley each pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree robbery, the district attorney’s office said. Mr. White was sentenced to four years in state prison, and Mr. Whaley was sentenced to six years in state prison, the office said.The police said last year that two others — Harold White and Jennifer McBride — had been charged with being accessories after the shooting. Ms. McBride reported that she had found the dogs and had responded to a reward email to return them, the police said.Ms. McBride ultimately took the dogs to a Los Angeles police station, the police said. The police said that they later discovered that Ms. McBride had a relationship with one of the men who had been arrested.According to the district attorney’s office, Harold White pleaded no contest on Monday to one count of being a former convict in possession of a gun. He is scheduled to be sentenced next year, the office said. Ms. McBride’s case is continuing, the office said. More

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      in Movies

      Animal Lovers, Rejoice: The NY Cat and Dog Film Festivals Return

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      The programs feature many surprises, including a cat that plays Wordle and a lone man’s odyssey to feed Turkish strays.Tracie Hotchner still doesn’t offer tissues.During her early years as the director and founder of two animal film festivals, audience members would occasionally confront her and say, “‘Why don’t you give Kleenex?’” Hotchner recalled. While her programs have never included “Old Yeller”-style tear-jerkers, she acknowledges that her first festivals were too long and emotional. Even a steady string of uplifting tales could cause sentimental overload.But when Hotchner’s seventh annual NY Dog Film Festival and fifth annual NY Cat Film Festival arrive on Sunday at the Village East by Angelika Theater in Manhattan — before a monthslong tour of the United States and Canada — they will be as sleek and compact as a prizewinning Abyssinian or a champion greyhound. Featuring international short films, each festival now runs under two hours and intersperses serious works with the purely comic. (The 16-film cat festival screens at 11 a.m., the 17-film dog festival at 2 p.m.)This year, moviegoers can witness the challenging lives of feral cats in Malta and abandoned dogs in Mexico. Yet they can also see a feline parody of “America’s Got Talent,” fancifully animated dog and cat crime capers and a documentary about golden retrievers that served as the legitimately elected mayors of Idyllwild, Calif.With each festival, “I’ve tried to make it more balanced and something that is a magic carpet ride,” said Hotchner, an author and radio host in Bennington, Vt., whose Radio Pet Lady Network features online talk shows. During a telephone interview, she added, “There’s lots of short films, but you don’t have several in a row that slam you emotionally.”The programs have transformed in other ways, too. The 2022 editions are the most global, including films from Chile, France, Ireland, China, India, Israel and Sweden. Hotchner is also extending the projects’ reach: A film distributor is booking both festivals in other cities well into 2023. And for the first time, she is hosting a 20-minute question-and-answer session with a few filmmakers after each festival’s Manhattan screening.“I’ve never had a theater that would let me do that before,” Hotchner said. “It costs them money.” She explained that the Village East was donating the time, a gesture that is very much in the spirit of her feel-good, do-good mission: Ten percent of the $20 ticket price for each festival goes to a local animal charity in every city hosting the programs. On Sunday, the beneficiary is NYC Second Chance Rescue, whose co-founder, Lisa Blanco, will help greet audiences.But what may distinguish this year’s festivals most is the element of surprise. “Many of the films were not like anything I’d seen before,” Hotchner said.Consider “Kopecki” (“The Dog God”), Hayrettin Alan’s 11-minute documentary about a lone man feeding homeless dogs near Van, Turkey. Lacking narration or dialogue, the film simply follows this self-appointed savior, as packs of startlingly beautiful dogs greet him with unanticipated affection.Clockwise from top left: Scenes from “Jade & Trubs,” “Kopecki,” “Duet” and “Please Rescue Me.”Clockwise from top left: Mutual Rescue; Hayrettin Alan; Yadid Hirschtritt Licht; Kim BestHotchner also found a live-action fictional work among her entries — these are rare, as they tend to have high budgets. This selection, “Adam,” by Hope Elizabeth Martinez, focuses on a teenage girl whose sole companion is an ailing 14-year-old dog.Among the animated submissions, Hotchner discovered an unusual variety of styles and unexpectedly serious themes. In Yadid Hirschtritt Licht’s lyrical “Duet,” for example, a cat’s loving legacy continues after its original owner dies.But the humorous films offer surprises, too. Ever see a cat play Wordle? Kim Best, a filmmaker in Durham, N.C., created “Cat of Letters” with her own pet, Nube. (Pronounced NOO-bay, the word is Spanish for “cloud.”) Although a cat lover, Best admits that her stars don’t take direction.“They’re very insubordinate and churlish,” she said in a phone interview.Nube was churlish enough to reject the fingerlike extensions Best tried to attach to his claws, so she used a stuffed animal’s paw affixed to a stylus to portray the cat tapping letters on an iPad. (It’s convincing.) But she also gave herself a challenge: Nube, whose thoughts are conveyed via subtitles, chooses only cat- or dog-related words for his opening Wordle efforts, so Best had to use those to solve the puzzles in real time. There was “no cheating,” she said.A director who has contributed to every NY Cat Film Festival so far, Best also has a documentary spotlighting a more typical feline talent: getting stuck in trees. “Please Rescue Me” follows Patrick Brandt, a kindly North Carolina biochemist and arborist who has volunteered his skills and equipment to extract some 250 trapped cats — and one pet coatimundi.As he says in the film, “I’m not so much rescuing the cat as I’m rescuing the person.”Animals, of course, frequently save the people who save them. Mutual Rescue, a global nonprofit initiative that creates documentaries about these relationships to encourage pet adoption, delivered “Kimo & Jazz.” This film concerns a young gay man from a conservative religious background who finally felt able to come out to his parents after adopting a shelter dog. The pet, Jazz, then helped sustain him as his father was dying.Another Mutual Rescue documentary, “Jade & Trubs,” chronicles how Double Trouble — a toothless, sickly and thoroughly unsociable feline shelter resident — uncharacteristically responded to Jade, a little girl with autism visiting the organization. Jade had sensitivities that turned every bedtime into long bouts of tears and screams. But once the family adopted the animal, nicknamed Trubs, both child and cat blossomed in unexpected ways.Perhaps the most surprising interplay of rescuer and rescued, however, takes place in “Underdogs,” an independent project by Alex Astrella. His documentary unfolds at the California Men’s Colony, a prison in San Luis Obispo where the inmates train service dogs for veterans and emergency workers with post-traumatic stress disorder. The prisoners’ dark histories — several on camera are convicted murderers — contrast starkly with their tender devotion to the dogs and their purpose.“I took a life,” one says. “Now I want to save a life.”Astrella said in a phone interview that he intended to illustrate the program’s effects on the men and “the change it’ll hopefully enact on their lives going forward.” The film, he added, is a testament to the “spiritual power that dogs have on humans.”Such connections are the thread that runs through the festivals. As Hotchner said, their mission is “to celebrate that human-animal bond, however and wherever it occurs.”So prepare to celebrate. And maybe pack a few tissues.NY Cat Film Festival and NY Dog Film FestivalOct. 23; the Village East by Angelika Theater, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com, dogfilmfestival.com. More

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      in Television

      Meg Stalter Rejoices With Dolly Parton and a Loyal Chihuahua

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      The comedian talks about banishing the worst of 2021 in Amazon’s “Yearly Departed,” while celebrating the best in real life.Meg Stalter is famously her own biggest fan — if not you, then who? — but even she has been a little awed by her recent success.Her live comedy shows sell out in minutes. She stole scenes in her first acting gig as an ebulliently inept assistant to a talent agent on HBO Max’s “Hacks.”Now she is laying the worst of 2021 to rest. On Dec. 23 she’ll bid farewell to “hot vaxx summer” in a flirty-girl get-up, in the second edition of the Amazon annual special “Yearly Departed.”The hyperchatty Stalter was star-struck by a lineup of fellow comics that included Yvonne Orji, Chelsea Peretti and Dulcé Sloan. Then Jane Fonda walked onto the set to shoot her segment.“No one could talk,” she said. “We were all drooling and I think she thought we were weird because at first we couldn’t speak. And she was like, ‘Is everything OK?’”In a word, very.But after paying her dues in comedy for eight years, Stalter sees her ascent during the pandemic as bittersweet.“Everything is starting to happen now and it’s really strange to be so worried about other people — we’ve experienced so much devastation — and also to stop and be like, ‘How lucky am I to be living my dream right now?’” she said. “I guess that’s what life is. You have to just embrace the good parts, even when it’s scary and hard.”Calling from London, where she was making her British stand-up debut at the Soho Theater, Stalter did an impromptu riff on her own Top 10 of 2021, from Dolly Parton’s inclusiveness to the joy of private karaoke rooms. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Dolly PartonI’ve listened to her every year, but especially this last year. She is the best celebrity because she feels, to me at least, that she just supports everyone. She’s the true meaning of a Christian because she loves God, and then she loves people, and she accepts everyone for who they are — which is what we should have all learned this year, just to love each other and take care of each other.I’m somebody who grew up in church and doesn’t go now. I’m this bisexual person who still believes in God. Dolly doesn’t have any judgment on anyone else’s life, but still keeps some of the beliefs that she grew up with.2. The “Free Britney” MovementMy friends and I are so happy for her. Everyone always knew that she didn’t have control over her life, so it was really powerful and exciting to see her now get control. We’re celebrating — and it’s her birthday today! I bet she’s somewhere strange with her boyfriend, like dancing on a boat.3. TakeoutI’d love to cook more, but I am addicted to ordering takeout or Grubhub or Postmates. In London, I haven’t been able to figure out their ordering food apps. It’s like moving to a different planet.4. Instagram LiveWhen the pandemic started, I did a bunch. Every night I would do a different crazy-themed one. I’d be like, “OK, we’re going to Paris tonight.” And then I’d decorate my apartment with stuff that I could find that made it look like Paris. It was a way for me to connect to other people. I was in New York alone, really scared, and I felt like the only thing keeping me sane was doing that at night.5. High-Waisted JeansThere’s something really classic about wearing a good pair of high-waisted jeans. I like a plain shirt and jeans during the day, and then wearing this beautiful gown at night for a show. That’s really appealing to me. I think both are a little bit of structure that we didn’t have during quarantine, because we were wearing sweatpants.6. Time With FamilyMy family is truly everything to me. When would we ever have spent this much time in the same house as when we quarantined together? It was really lifesaving to be laughing in the same house again.7. “The Office”It’s one of my comfort shows. I watched it a lot this year. It still holds up. The dinner party episode is my favorite. The boss invites people to come to dinner at his house and he’s being very passive-aggressive with his girlfriend. Either people think it’s the funniest episode of TV or they’re like, “I can’t even watch it.” It’s kind of my sense of humor.8. Dining in Restaurants AgainSomething I really was missing in quarantine was the feeling of being at a table with all of your friends and everyone’s laughing and you don’t even remember why and everyone’s talking over each other. It’s exciting that we are experiencing that again slowly. Every hangout feels precious and thrilling.9. Private Karaoke RoomsLast night I did a private karaoke room with a couple of friends, and we had the best time. It felt safe. We just sang for hours. It makes sense for it to be more popular now than it was. My friend was on a trip and he did a solo karaoke room. I don’t know if I would like that or not. I like to be in front of an audience, even if it’s three friends.10. Quarantine AnimalsI feel like everyone should have a pet now. I think it’s lifesaving. I have a Chihuahua who’s 15 years old. She was a family dog, but she came to live with me during quarantine and I am attached to her. Animals are so empathetic and they can tell when you’re sad and they just really calm you down. I’m afraid of when she passes because she’s so old. My sister is begging me to get another animal, but I feel like my dog doesn’t want me to get another dog. She likes to be alone with me. More

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      in Movies

      The NY Cat and Dog Film Festivals Return After Pandemic Hiatus

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      After a pandemic-induced hiatus, these celebrations of human-animal bonds are screening in Manhattan and beyond.Two annual cinematic celebrations invariably attract impassioned ticket buyers, even though they lack car chases, explosions, alien invasions or Daniel Craig as a pouty James Bond.What they do have: whiskers, wildness and no small amount of wit.They’re the NY Cat Film Festival and the NY Dog Film Festival, which are returning to Manhattan after a pandemic-induced hiatus. The cat festival, screening at noon on Saturday — Global Cat Day — at the Village East by Angelika theater, comprises 21 short works that run for a total of around 90 minutes. The nearly two-hour dog festival, which arrives at the same theater on Oct. 24, features 20 short films. (Animal lovers outside New York can see the festivals, too: They will tour for several months, both nationwide and in Canada.)“I think it’s the highest-quality year, possibly, for both,” said Tracie Hotchner, an author and radio host in Vermont who founded the dog festival in 2015 and the cat edition two years later. In a telephone interview, she explained that in the early days of lockdown in 2020, “people couldn’t find toilet paper, but they were making beautiful movies.”Not surprisingly, the pandemic is featured in both festivals. In “Will You Be My Quarantine?,” a feline comedy, the actress and director Susku Ekim Kaya shows herself and her pet, Lady Leia, in split screen, engaged in typically obsessive lockdown activities like grooming, TV watching, cellphone scrolling and FaceTime calling. They lead harmonious parallel lives, whereas the feline protagonists of Jasmin Scuteri-Young’s “Quarantine Diary” and Asali Echols’s “House Cats” complain of their owners’ constant presence in human-supplied voice-overs.The dog festival’s subjects, on the other hand, never seem to long for social distancing. “You don’t believe in personal space,” Kyle Scoble says tenderly to Darla, his Labrador retriever-pointer mix, in “The Second Time I Got to Know My Dog,” a documentary that acts as a tribute to how Darla got him through 2020.But cats may have a reason for their apparently aloof attitudes. “If it’s an indoor cat, it’s enduring a perpetual state of lockdown,” Kim Best, a director from Durham, N.C., said in a phone conversation.That observation fuels Best’s “The Great Escape,” in which a cat named Monkey makes concerted attempts to exit the household, even consulting the digital assistant Alexa, which he bats around and meows at. In Best’s other festival entry, “Cat Capitalization,” her pet, Nube, turns to the internet to market his artistic talent, pretentiously thanking — in thought bubbles — mentors like the artists Mark Rothko and Vincent van Gogh. (Nube is missing a bit of one ear.)Best said she aimed for “a satire of not only capitalism but also of academia.”Such humor is very much a theme of the cat festival, in which films like Nevada Caldwell’s “Feline Noir” and Priscilla Dean’s “Catfight at the O’Kay Corral” parody old Hollywood clichés.But while the canine film slate is not without laughs — David Coole’s animated “Go Fetch” is a pointed two-minute revenge comedy — it has far more of the in-depth examinations of the human-animal bond that characterized both festivals previously.“Affection in the Streets,” for instance, a Brazilian documentary by Thiago Köche, captures the lives of Pôrto Alegre’s homeless, who often take better care of their dogs than themselves. The loyal pets also attract concern from passers-by, who frequently ignore the suffering of the animals’ owners.“People who love dogs just look right past the humans,” Hotchner said. “I would love more movies about that, because I think it’s the thing we don’t want to look at.”“The Comfort Dogs” also shows the power of pet ownership. Made by Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker, an Australian couple who live and work together in Brooklyn, the film is an excerpt from their feature documentary “We Don’t Deserve Dogs.” The segment focuses on the Comfort Dog Project, which provides pets to young people who were forced to become child soldiers in Uganda’s civil war.With the dogs at their side, the former soldiers can share “quite harrowing” experiences, Salleh said in a joint phone call. “The dogs almost become part of the storytelling method itself.”Another documentary, Zach Putnam’s “Nicola,” illustrates how its subject, a yellow Lab from Canine Companions, a service program for people with disabilities, transformed not only the life of the college student who received her. She also delivered a strong lesson in trust and sacrifice to the student who devotedly trained her but ultimately, tearfully, had to give her up.Both festivals, however, remind viewers that these animals need people as much as people need them. Hotchner, who organizes the programs as a labor of love — tickets to each are $20 — always contributes part of each screening’s sales to a related local charity. The cat festival in New York will help support Bideawee’s Feral Cat Initiative, while this year, all dog festival showings will benefit the nonprofits associated with Saving Senior Dogs Week (Oct. 25-31).“There is a growing awareness,” Covid aside, “that senior dogs are delightful to adopt and the most quick to be put to sleep in a shelter,” Hotchner said. In Gary Tellalian’s “Legends of Comedy Share Love for Old Dogs,” you’ll hear this message in a public service announcement from celebrities who are seniors themselves: Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart and Lily Tomlin, along with Carl Reiner, who died last June at 98.The plight of dogs that aren’t cuddly puppies also surfaces in documentaries like “Not Broken: Freedom Ride,” by Krista Dillane, Emma Lao and Dylan Abad, about a long journey to transport 53 rescued dogs from Louisiana to a pet adoption fair in Rhode Island. In “Chino,” another excerpt from “We Don’t Deserve Dogs,” its aging subject, a street mutt in Santiago, Chile, survives simply because concerned residents provide care.“The street dog culture there is completely different,” Tucker said, adding that the animals are a way to “just bring an entire community together” — a goal for these festivals, too.NY Cat Film FestivalOct. 16 at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com.NY Dog Film FestivalOct. 24 at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; dogfilmfestival.com. More

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      in Movies

      Bradley Whitford Finds Inspiration in the Theater (and Dog Park)

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      The star of “The Handmaid’s Tale” talks about the magic sauce of Yo-Yo Ma and Aretha Franklin, and is ready to do some Ken Burns voice-overs.Sometimes an actor’s harshest reviews come from inside his own home. “My son said to me recently, ‘No offense, Dad, but I’ve seen dogs be good in movies,’” Bradley Whitford recalled. “Well, it’s devastating because it’s true.”But maybe his son isn’t familiar with the full extent of his father’s process.Yes, Whitford has previously compared Commander Lawrence, his Emmy-winning misogynistic architect of Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” to Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense who helped escalate the Vietnam War and then struggled with its moral consequences.But examine Lawrence more closely and you might recognize the unreadable gaze of a Siberian husky, the soulful danger of a mastiff, the Australian shepherd’s keen intelligence.Because sometimes Whitford trawls for creative inspiration at the dog park, where he spends lots of time with his well-loved rescues: Izzy, a Chihuahua-Jack Russell mix, and Otis, a boxer.So is Lawrence more bite or bark with June (Elisabeth Moss) in Season 4, which begins on Hulu on April 28, as his humanity begins to peek through the cracks in his formidable facade?“I don’t think Lawrence is even aware of it,” he said, “but she is leading him.”Calling from Pasadena, Calif., where he lives with his wife, the actress Amy Landecker, Whitford chatted about his 10 cultural essentials. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Story of Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf My earliest, coziest memories are of my mother reading me that book. I was raised Quaker, and we used to joke that “Ferdinand” was kind of a Quaker bible. My mother used to say that when it came out, it was like a commentary on fascism. But for a young Quaker kid, it was extolling these values of nonviolence and nonconformity. Whenever anybody has a kid, I always get them that book.2. WTF With Marc Maron Podcast If I could create an area of study that I think should exist, it would be called “creative studies,” where you study the Beatles, the Renaissance, Steve Jobs, Duke Ellington — people’s creative processes. In the meantime, I listen to Marc Maron because he has those conversations. Whether he’s talking to actors, talking to comedians, it’s just a fascinating way to see how these creative people make stuff. Marc Maron is emotionally pornographic. He’s wide open. And because he’s such an open book, everybody opens up to him. I guess I like fearless people because I’m not. He asked me to do a show and I was terrified.3. Sharon Olds I was driving soon after my daughter was born and I heard someone reading a poem of hers called “Her First Week,” about a baby’s first week. And there’s an image of putting this newborn baby down and how she settles in the crib like a basket of laundry. And it was the most beautiful, true image. I pulled the car over and I was crying, and I started reading all of her stuff. She is so fearlessly intimate and crystalline in her imagery.4. Dog Parks Anybody who knows me knows I’m completely obsessed with dogs. What’s pathetic is when I was shooting in Toronto and couldn’t bring the dogs, I found myself going to the dog park. This very sweet Canadian woman who I saw there every day came over to me and said, “Which one’s yours?” And I said: “Oh, I don’t have one. I just miss my dog. I’m away from home.” And she stepped away from me, like I was a pederast at an elementary school.There are roles I’ve played that are combinations of dogs at a dog park. When I had to play Hubert Humphrey [in HBO’s “All the Way”], I realized he was a cross between a corgi and a boxer. I just find a fascinating display of characters at a dog park. It’s like walking into some four-legged mask class.5. “Aretha’s Gold” My father’s mother was legally blind. She had a record player that came from the Library for the Blind, and I would borrow it. Before every high school performance I would put on “Aretha’s Gold” and lock myself in my room or the basement and turn it all the way up and jump around and sing. And that became a sort of a good-luck warm-up. So when I’m nervous, even to this day, I blast “Aretha’s Gold.”6. ’92 Theater at Wesleyan University When I was at Wesleyan, it was the place where all the student-initiated productions happened, and it’s where I fell in love with acting. It was this joyous venue that had been a church. I just shot “Tick, Tick … Boom!” with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who felt the same. That’s where he started writing “In the Heights.” It’s just this magical place. When I saw “Hamilton” for the first time, I had no idea the kind of emotional response I was going to have, and I remember after the show I was crying. And I said to Lin, “You turn the theater into a church.” There’s something about the ’92 Theater and the freedom in that place — and how audacious you could be before you were trying to do this professionally — that is creatively nourishing.7. Yo-Yo Ma His relationship with the Bach Prelude [of Cello Suite No. 1 in G major] is incredible to me. People always say of “The West Wing,” “Are there any moments that stick out?” And for many of us, it was the day Yo-Yo Ma came, and he was playing that piece, and he was the most generous, unpretentious human being. He came out into a room full of probably a hundred background artists, with his extraordinary cello, and he said: “Does anyone want to play this? Does anyone want to hold it?” He’s all about breaking down the lines of hierarchy and pretension in his classical music world.That day, he was playing that piece and I’m supposed to be having this emotional breakdown. You’re shooting him first, and you have a recording of it, and then at some point you turn around and get to me. He technically doesn’t even need to be there, let alone play it. And take after take after take, he is playing it with his whole heart. It was just astonishing.8. School Plays I really love watching young people perform and navigate instinctively the dilemma of making a spectacle out of themselves. [Laughs, almost diabolically.] I had a weird moment in seventh grade where I was doing a play and it was like this epiphany. I was like: “Oh my God, this is the only thing I’ve ever done that uses everything. When I’m reading a book, I’m shutting off my body. When I’m doing math, I’m shutting off my heart.” And I fell in love with “this is everything” — this is your heart and your brain and your body. You know, we have all these sports leagues and I really believe there should be acting leagues.9. “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman It came out 30-some years ago. What he was talking about was how the values of entertainment have distorted the way we conduct public discourse to our detriment. The problem isn’t the obvious forms of fascism — that people are going to start burning books. The problem is people are going to be so distracted they don’t care about books anymore. There’s a big part of the book that says that television is at its most dangerous when it is pretending to be edifying. It’s basically a condemnation of everything that I mistakenly get celebrated for.10. Ken Burns Documentaries He doesn’t know this, but he’s the only person I’ve ever stalked. I was in New York, and he was walking on the street, and I followed him about 10 blocks. I was doing “A Few Good Men” when “The Civil War” came out, and I remember being blown away by it. But what was striking to me — and I’m contradicting what I said about “Amusing Ourselves to Death” — was this power of visual storytelling to communicate the experience of the Civil War in a way a book could not. And then I watched all of them. And they’re hypnotic to me. “The Roosevelts,” “The National Parks,” “Baseball,” “Jazz,” “Country Music.” I am extremely jealous of everybody who has ever done a voice-over for them. I’m [expletive] available. More

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      in Music

      Lady Gaga’s Dog Walker Recalls Being Shot and Cradling ‘Guardian Angel’ Dog

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLady Gaga’s Dog Walker Recalls Being Shot and Cradling ‘Guardian Angel’ DogRyan Fischer wrote on Instagram about his “recovery from a very close call with death.”Ryan Fischer posted this image of himself on Instagram in 2017.Credit…Ben AlfonsoMarch 1, 2021Lady Gaga’s dog walker recounted in a vivid Instagram post on Monday his frantic thoughts in the moments after he was shot in Los Angeles last week by two men who stole two of the singer’s French bulldogs and left him in a pool of blood.Referring to Asia, a third dog owned by the singer, the dog walker, Ryan Fischer, wrote that as “blood poured from my gun shot wound, an angel trotted over and laid next to me. My panicked screams calmed as I looked at her, even though it registered that the blood pooling around her tiny body was my own.”Mr. Fischer, who did not immediately respond to a message on Instagram, wrote that he was “still in recovery from a very close call with death” and “will write and say more later.”The Feb. 24 shooting took place around 9:40 p.m. local time as Mr. Fischer was walking north on Sierra Bonita Avenue in Hollywood, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.As of Monday, the Police Department had not announced an arrest in the case, nor released information about the woman who returned the dogs, unharmed, to the police two days later.“Investigators are still working the case, and the investigation is still ongoing,” Capt. Stacy D. Spell, a spokeswoman for the department, said in an email on Monday. She also referred to a statement the police released last week, saying they would not discuss the woman who returned the dogs, nor the location of where they were found, “due to the active criminal investigation and for her safety.”A report by The Associated Press on Friday quoted Capt. Jonathan Tippett of the department as saying that the woman who took the dogs to the police station appeared to be “uninvolved and unassociated” with the attack.Mr. Fischer’s Instagram posts, which accompanied pictures of him in a hospital bed, included praise for family and friends, as well as for emergency personnel and health care workers: “you literally saved my life and helped me take newborn walks, I can’t thank you enough.”What exactly led to the attack is not clear. Most of what is publicly known comes from surveillance video from a nearby home.On it, Mr. Fischer is seen walking on a sidewalk, which is partly obscured by a fence, as a white car pulls up next to him. Two men exit the car and tussle with Mr. Fischer. He screams repeatedly and moments later, a gunshot is heard. “Help me, I’ve been shot,” Mr. Fischer can be heard saying just after the car drives away. “I’ve been shot. Oh my god.”Mr. Fischer recalled that exact moment, writing on Instagram, “I cradled Asia as best I could, thanked her for all the incredible adventures we’d been on together, apologized that I couldn’t defend her brothers, and then resolved that I would still try to save them… and myself.”“I looked backed at my guardian angel. I smiled at her shaking form, thankful that at least she would be ‘okay,’” he added.When emergency medical workers treated Mr. Fischer, he was cradling the dog, according to KABC-TV, which had a helicopter over the scene.Officer Jeff Lee, also a spokesman for the Police Department, said last week that a semiautomatic handgun was believed used in the attack.The once-stolen dogs are named Koji and Gustav and belong to Lady Gaga, who had offered a $500,000 reward for information about them, a representative for the singer said. Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, announced in 2016 that she had added a black-and-white puppy to her family of dogs, which included two named Koji and Asia.At the time, she named the puppy “cowpig and moopig” before naming it Gustav. She has featured the dogs in her social media posts over the years.In his Instagram post on Monday, Mr. Fischer included a message to Lady Gaga: “your babies are back and the family is whole… we did it!”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Lady Gaga’s Dogs Are Returned Safely

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLady Gaga’s Dogs Are Returned SafelyThieves in Los Angeles stole the French bulldogs two days earlier, shooting the man who had been walking them on a Hollywood avenue.A woman walking her dog across the street from an area where Lady Gaga’s dog walker was shot and two of her French bulldogs were stolen.Credit…Chris Pizzello/Associated PressMike Ives and Feb. 26, 2021Lady Gaga’s two French bulldogs were recovered unharmed on Friday in Los Angeles, the police said, two days after thieves stole the dogs and shot a man who was walking them.The man was shot on Wednesday night after two people got out of a white car and demanded that he “turn over the dogs at gunpoint,” the Los Angeles Police Department said in a Twitter thread. After a struggle, they made off with two of the three dogs he had been walking.The police said it appeared as though a semiautomatic handgun had been used to shoot the dog walker, later identified by Lady Gaga as Ryan Fischer. He was taken to a hospital on Wednesday and was in serious but stable condition on Friday afternoon.Someone took the dogs to a Los Angeles police station at about 6 p.m. Friday, and a representative of Lady Gaga’s picked them up, said Officer Mike Lopez, a police spokesman. “The dogs are returned safely,” he said.He declined to provide further details, saying the investigation was continuing.No arrests had been made as of Thursday.A report by The Associated Press on Friday quoted Capt. Jonathan Tippett of the Los Angeles Police Department as saying that the woman who took the dogs to the police station appeared to be “uninvolved and unassociated” with the attack.Earlier on Friday, Lady Gaga wrote on Instagram that she was offering a $500,000 reward for the safe return of the dogs, Koji and Gustav. “My heart is sick and I am praying my family will be whole again with an act of kindness,” she wrote.She also thanked Mr. Fischer, who is in his 30s and lives in the neighborhood where he was shot.“I continue to love you Ryan Fischer, you risked your life to fight for our family,” she said in the post. “You’re forever a hero.”Mr. Fischer was so devoted to Koji and Gustav that he would “take a bullet” for them, one of his friends, Steven Lazaroff, told a CBS television reporter after the shooting.“He eats, sleeps and breathes those dogs,” he said.Johnny Diaz contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Lady Gaga’s Dogs Are Stolen and Dog Walker Is Shot

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLady Gaga’s Dogs Are Stolen and Dog Walker Is ShotThe Los Angeles police said that two French bulldogs were taken Wednesday night and that a dog walker was critically injured. Lady Gaga is offering a reward for their safe return, a representative said.A representative for Lady Gaga said that two French bulldogs that were stolen in Hollywood on Wednesday night belonged to the singer.Credit…Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesFeb. 25, 2021Updated 1:15 p.m. ETA man was shot while he was walking two French bulldogs in Los Angeles on Wednesday night and the dogs were stolen, the police said. The dogs belonged to the singer Lady Gaga, according to a representative.The shooting took place around 9:40 p.m. local time as the man, whom police did not identify, was walking north on Sierra Bonita Avenue in Hollywood, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.It was not clear why the man was shot. The man, who is in his 30s, was shot at least once, the police said. The gunman stole the dogs and was seen leaving in a white vehicle, the authorities said. The victim was cradling a third dog as emergency medical workers treated him, according to KABC-TV which had a helicopter over the scene.“It looks like a semiautomatic handgun was used,” Officer Jeff Lee, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said Thursday.The victim was taken to a hospital and was in critical condition on Thursday. No arrests have been made and an investigation is ongoing, Officer Lee said. The department’s Robbery-Homicide Division is handling the case.The shooting and theft was reported by KABC in Los Angeles on Thursday morning. TMZ reported that the dogs belonged to Lady Gaga.The dogs, named Koji and Gustav, belong to Lady Gaga, who is offering a $500,000 reward for information about the dogs, a representative for the singer said. Anyone with information should email KojiandGustav@gmail.com, the representative said.Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, announced in 2016 that she had added a black-and-white puppy to her family of dogs, which included two named Koji and Asia.At the time, she named the puppy “cowpig and moopig” before naming it Gustav. She has featured the dogs in her social media posts over the years.Lady Gaga, who performed the national anthem at President Biden’s inauguration last month, released her latest album, “Chromatica,” last year.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More