The Cut - Bridget Everett Finally Gets Her Due

Bridget Everett meets me on her turf. Just upstairs from Joe’s Pub — the intimate venue where the alt-cabaret star took off a number of years ago, and where she’s liable to pop up and reverse-motorboat someone in the audience or shred a Janis Joplin cover with Patti LuPone — she’s waiting cozily at the Library Bar. Instantly disarming and conversational, when the subject of dating someone from her native Kansas is broached, she deadpans, “Asking me for any advice about anything that’s gonna take you anywhere is a really bad idea. If you wanna know how to fuck your life up, call me.”

If the Public fashions itself an artiste’s home away from home, Everett has more than taken it up on that offer. One of the general managers watches her dogs whenever she’s out of town, and virtually every single waiter stops by our table to greet her like we’re in a production of Hello, Dolly! She orders a vodka martini and leans in to tell me that, like her, the woman who brought over our drinks is from Kansas. In her day, she says, Kansans didn’t move to New York, “the more logical progression” being Chicago or Dallas. Now, the ones that do flag her down on the street to shout out their hometown pride.

The end of BuzzFeed News marks the end of an era in digital media. “Congratulations to anyone who had ‘eco-fascists getting the #NotAllMen treatment’ on their 2023 bingo card.” Some might say this Champagne conflict is a matter of principle and respecting local traditions, others might call it, well, petty. All the new trailers you may have missed this week. As if modern life weren’t scary enough, there are still people doing exorcisms in 2023. Rest in peace to Godzilla, the alligator dumped in Prospect Park Lake back in February. Here’s hoping the person who kept her as a “pet” stubs their toe every single day for the rest of their life. The list of reasons not to go on a cruise grows ever longer. And exciting literary news: Hilary Mantel had an unpublished Jane Austen–inspired novel, and The Guardian is going to publish an excerpt from it.

Sign up to get the Cut Shop newsletter, our stylish weekly guide to what’s worth your money.