Weekend Whats

What to Watch: Hacks, a shows about a Las Vegas comedian who hires a millennial writer, has always been excellent. And it’s one of the rare comedies that gets better each season. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder are better than ever in Season 3 on Max.

+ What to Hear: It was clear from the first couple of released singles that Twenty-One Pilots had returned to top form on their latest album. Clancy is out now.

+ What to Read:: “There is really no such thing as a big-city newspaper columnist anymore, but Breslin was big—he would literally call reporters on the phone to tell them, ‘I’m big.’ He did beer commercials. He hosted a television show. His books, novels and nonfiction hit bestseller lists, and he was more famous than many of the politicians he chronicled. He was assaulted by the mafia. When the Son of Sam was terrorizing New York in the summer of 1977, he addressed a cryptic and sadistic letter to Breslin, then a columnist for the Daily News. It is difficult to underscore to anyone under 45—I fall into this category—how influential newspapers could be, and the mystique a top columnist possessed.” In a lot of ways, I envisioned NextDraft as a modern day column. My beat is the internet. Ross Barkan with a look back at The Breslin Era: The end of the big-city columnist. (In the 80s, Breslin saw a celebrity real estate heir for the phony he was—and complained about the way the media covered him.)