When my editor asked whether I’d be interested in writing about the growing trend of friends getting together to tackle to-do lists, I thought, “Sounds about as fun as a group root canal.” I e-mailed back, “YES!” It was February; I hate the cold; the research would take place indoors. Also, I figured, it might take a village to make me get that comptroller form notarized, memorize the map of South America (don’t ask), and write my will—an item on my list for eighteen years. (As for to-do-list items that never die, thirty-three years ago, the agenda of a friend of mine included: No. 1, get my figure back; No. 2, dance lessons . . . No. 8, figure out if I should break up with Tim; No. 9, leave Tim. Not his real name, because my friend is still wondering about divorcing him.)
Everyone, it turns out, has a lot of shit to do, and many find the drudgery easier to slog through in the presence of company and snacks. Over the course of two months, I sat in on eight Admin Nights, as these gatherings are often called. (“Are they, like, fossils of extinct mollusks?” a hedge-fund guy at a dinner party asked me, thinking of ammonites.) There was a meetup of young mothers who had a lot of children’s birthday parties to organize, a group of Gen Z-ers whose morning session had a live soundtrack provided by a d.j., and a group of people with A.D.H.D., based mostly in Australia, who meet regularly on Zoom. At the Women in Games get-together, a seven-year-old attendee, brought by her mother, marvelled that grownups have homework, too.
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Lionel Messi, playing in a record sixth World Cup, scored a hat trick last night in Argentina’s 3–0 win against Algeria. Messi, who turns thirty-nine in a week, is now tied as the all-time leading goal-scorer in World Cup history—and this year’s tournament is just getting started.
Messi was supposed to be too old. How is he doing this?
“What the world saw last night is what Argentinians have been saying for years: Messi will never be too old! Even in his late thirties, he shows time and again that he still has the capacity to not only make a game-changing difference, but put on a spectacular show in the process. Messi has faced nearly unbearable pressure throughout most of his international career—until he led Argentina to championships at the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 Finalíssima, and, of course, the 2022 World Cup—and now he is playing freely, like he has nothing left to prove. He is backed by a squad of some of the best players in every position, many of them ten or even fifteen years younger, all of whom admire and adore him. It certainly helped that Algeria did not play well at all. But as long as Messi and Argentina can keep having this much fun, may he play on forever.”
— Jordan Salama, a contributing writer to The New Yorker who has been an Argentina fan from birth
A movie: Richard Brody loves “Disclosure Day.”
A dance show: The pearl of the American Ballet Theatre’s season is “Sylvia,” Frederick Ashton’s tongue-in-cheek gloss on Greek mythology.
Catalogues: Can you sort the items into the correct order?
Laugh Lines: Test your knowledge of classic New Yorker cartoons.
Cartoon by Jonathan Rosen
P.S. If you can’t get enough of Patricia Marx, she also wrote a Shouts & Murmurs piece last week, imagining the summer’s hottest audiobooks for dogs. 🐶
Austin Elias-de Jesus contributed to today’s edition.
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