Who won Netflix's 'Building The Band\
Netflix's experimental music competition show, "Building The Band," has named its first winning group.
In the Episode 10 finale, which dropped Wednesday, July 23, girl group 3Quency won the celebrity judges' favor and earned the title of winners for "Building The Band" Season 1. The group, comprising Nori Royale, Wennely Quezada, and Brianna Mazzola, took home the $500,000 prize.
"They have proven to us that they are ready. (They are) a band that has shown so much growth, the band that pulled out all the stops tonight," Nicole Scherzinger said.
The women edged out fellow finalists SZN4 – Donzell Taggart, Aaliyah Rose, Cameron Goode, and Katie Roeder – the show's only mixed-gender group, which was a gamble in a competition that saw dozens of 20-somethings eager to form girl groups and boy bands.
3Quency's win comes after judges Scherzinger, Kelly Rowland, and the late Liam Payne voted off Iconyx (also known as Soulidified), thus advancing 3Quency and SZN4. The trio's final song was Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby."
The win proved Rowland wrong in her prediction halfway through the episode that SZN4 would earn the title after they brought host AJ McLean and the judges to tears with their rendition of Rag'n'Bone Man's "Human."
The Season 1 groups that were also formed in the sound booths but didn't make it to the finale were Midnight Til Morning, Siren Society, and Sweet Seduction.
'We're amazing dancers, obviously': Liam Payne pokes fun at One Direction on 'Building The Band'
Liam Payne draws parallels between Iconyx and One Direction
Payne, who came from a boy band background as one-fifth of "The X-Factor" success story One Direction, was the subject of much fangirling from the contestants. After Iconyx failed to make it to the final performance, he was eager to comfort the four-piece boy band backstage.
"I'm just going to start here. One Direction came third," Payne said of the record-breaking group's fate on the U.K. music competition show.
"I've been stood exactly where you guys are, and I thought it was over. I thought it was done, that was the end of One Direction," he continued. "It was not. But I believe in you guys."
"Building The Band," Payne's last TV appearance, was taped in September 2024, just weeks before his death. The 31-year-old singer died Oct. 16 after falling from a third-floor balcony at a Buenos Aires hotel.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Magazine
4 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Everything You Need to Remember About 'Wednesday' Before Season 2
At long last, woe is no longer us now that Wednesday Season 2 is finally here. Following a nearly three-year hiatus, Netflix's uber-popular Addams Family spinoff is back for a highly-anticipated second season that will see Jenna Ortega's titular goth girl antiheroine return to Nevermore Academy for another year of outcast adventures, family drama, and supernatural mysteries. When Wednesday debuted in November 2022, Season 1 broke the record for the most hours watched in a week for any English-language TV series on Netflix by earning a whopping 341.23M hours viewed in its first seven days on the streamer. And co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) are hoping for nothing less from Season 2 of their macabre coming-of-age dramedy—premiering with Part 1 (Episodes 1–4) on Aug. 6 and followed by Part 2 (Episodes 5–8) on Sept. 3. 'It's always the biggest priority for us to not suffer a sophomore slump and no one's expectations for Season 2 are higher than ours,' Millar told the Hollywood Reporter. 'There are so many shows I watched and loved the first season, and then I watch the first 20 minutes of the second season and I'm out. So making sure the show delivered in terms of the comedy, the mystery, all the elements was our top priority, that we didn't want to let the audience down.' Here's everything you need to know before tuning into Wednesday Season 2. How did Wednesday Season 1 end? After getting expelled from public high school over an incident involving flesh-eating piranhas at the start of Season 1, Wednesday found herself enrolled at Nevermore, the same magical boarding school outside the town of Jericho, Vt., that her parents, Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), once attended. There, Wednesday was introduced to an eclectic mix of fellow so-called outcasts—like siren Bianca (Joy Sunday), gorgon Ajax (Georgie Farmer), and her bubbly werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers)—and began honing her psychic abilities. Following the brutal murder of a telekinetic student named Rowan (Calum Ross) by a monster who was later revealed to be a Hyde, Wednesday and her right-hand hand Thing (Victor Dorobantu) launched an investigation to uncover the identities of the Hyde and its master, and connect the dots of how Jericho's dark past was connected to the crimes of the present. In the end, Wednesday was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together to figure out the Hyde was her pseudo-boyfriend Tyler (Hunter Doohan), the supposedly normie son of Jericho sheriff Donovan Galpin (Jamie McShane), and that his strings were being pulled by her Nevermore dorm mom and botany teacher Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the beloved 1991 film The Addams Family and its 1993 sequel Addams Family Values). As it turned out, Marilyn Thornhill was an alias of the supposedly deceased Laurel Gates, a descendant of Jericho's colonial-era pilgrim founder Joseph Crackstone (William Houston) who had faked her own death with the goal of resurrecting her crazed ancestor from the grave so he could fulfill his mission of eradicating all outcasts. With the help of Enid, Bianca, psychic insect manipulator Eugene (Moosa Mostafa), and the ghost of her own ancestor, Goody Addams (also played by Ortega), Wednesday was able to take down Tyler and Laurel, and defeat Crackstone once and for all. However, considering both Tyler and Laurel were simply detained rather than killed, there's a chance they could still play a role in the events of Season 2. 'Not all the loose ends have been tied up as neatly as Wednesday thinks they have," Millar told Netflix's Tudum of what's to come. "And she loves the idea of a new mystery." What to expect at the start of Season 2 As Season 2 gets underway, we know that Wednesday will be grappling with the same stalker that was introduced in the closing scene of the Season 1 finale. She will also begin delving deeper into her well of psychic power despite the fact that Goody is no longer around to serve as her spirit guide—a predicament that seems like it may lead to some trouble for our favorite deadpan protagonist. Meanwhile, the rest of the Addams Family will all have expanded roles this season, with Wednesday's younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) starting at Nevermore while Morticia and Gomez have reason to establish a stronger presence at the school. Wednesday and Pugsley's Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) and Morticia's estranged mother, Grandmama Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley), will also be around to join in on the morbid fun. "We felt like we just touched the surface with those characters and the actors are so amazing in those roles," Millar told TV Line in 2022 of the series' plan for the other Addams. 'Catherine [Zeta-Jones] is, I think, an iconic Morticia. The relationship between Wednesday and Morticia is also essential to the show, and the idea that Wednesday is trying to forge her own path outside the family is important.' Notable additions to the cast include Steve Buscemi, who is playing Nevermore's new headmaster, Principal Barry Dort; Thandiwe Newton as Dr. Rachael Fairburn, the chief psychiatrist at Tyler's new home of Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital; and the one and only Mother Monster Lady Gaga, whose character description reads as follows: 'Mysterious and enigmatic, Rosaline Rotwood is a legendary Nevermore teacher who crosses paths with Wednesday.' As for Season 2's central mystery, in a Netflix sneak peak released in May, Gough and Millar suggested they were able to "top" the plot of Season 1. "The ambition of the show is limitless," Millar said. "We let our imaginations fly."
Business Upturn
a day ago
- Business Upturn
Emily in Paris Season 5: Release window, cast and plot details – Everything we known so far
By Aman Shukla Published on August 4, 2025, 20:00 IST Last updated August 4, 2025, 17:32 IST Emily in Paris fans are buzzing with excitement for Season 5, and it's easy to see why. This Netflix rom-com, created by Darren Star, keeps delivering swoon-worthy romance, jaw-dropping fashion, and dreamy European settings. After Season 4's dramatic twists, everyone's eager to see what's next for Emily Cooper. Here's the full scoop on Emily in Paris Season 5. Release Window for Emily in Paris Season 5 No official release date has dropped yet for Emily in Paris Season 5, but signs point to a premiere in late 2025 or early 2026. Filming started in Rome in May 2025, with shoots in Paris over the summer and Venice in August 2025. Past seasons took roughly 8-12 months from filming to release—Season 4, for instance, wrapped early 2024 and launched in two parts on August 15 and September 12, 2024. Following this trend, Season 5 could land between April and June 2026, though a late 2025 debut isn't out of the question if editing moves fast. Netflix confirmed Season 5 on September 16, 2024, right after Season 4, Part 2 hit screens. With 58 million households streaming Season 1 in its first month, the show's a global hit, so expect updates on Tudum or official social channels as production wraps. Who's in the Emily in Paris Season 5 Cast? The beloved cast is back, with some fresh faces stirring things up. Here's who's confirmed and who's joining the Parisian (and Roman) party. Returning Favorites Lily Collins as Emily Cooper: The bubbly marketing whiz navigates love and work across two cities. Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as Sylvie Grateau: The fierce agency boss faces new personal and professional drama. Ashley Park as Mindy Chen: Emily's bestie chases her music dreams after her Eurovision stint. Lucas Bravo as Gabriel: The charming chef stays central to Emily's heart, despite his arc feeling 'messy' to some. Samuel Arnold as Julien and Bruno Gouery as Luc: The quirky Agence Grateau duo keep the laughs coming. William Abadie as Antoine Lambert: Sylvie's lover and perfume tycoon returns. Lucien Laviscount as Alfie: Now a series regular, Alfie's role in Emily's love life grows. Eugenio Franceschini as Marcello: Emily's Italian heartthrob from Season 4 takes a bigger spotlight. Thalia Besson as Geneviève: The New Yorker causing waves at the agency is back. Paul Forman as Nico and Arnaud Binard as Laurent G.: Both add depth to the ensemble. Newcomers to Watch Minnie Driver : The Oscar-nominated star joins in a mystery role, bringing major star power. Michèle Laroque as Yvette: Sylvie's old friend adds new dynamics. Bryan Greenberg as Jake: An American in Paris, likely sparking fresh drama. A walk-on role winner from the 2024 amfAR gala auction at Cannes, who bid €250,000, will make a cameo. A Big Exit Camille Razat as Camille: In a shocker, Razat shared on Instagram that Camille's story has 'wrapped up naturally.' While she hinted at a possible return, her exit leaves fans wondering how the show will handle her absence. Talk of a Kim Cattrall cameo floated after Lucas Bravo said he's 'manifesting' it, but nothing's set in stone. The mix of returning stars and new talent promises plenty of sparks. What's the Plot for Emily in Paris Season 5? Season 5 picks up after Season 4's jaw-dropping finale, with Emily diving into a new chapter in Rome alongside Marcello. Here's what's brewing based on the latest details. Paris Meets Rome (and Venice) Emily's world now spans Paris and Rome, with a special shoot in Venice from August 5-15, 2025. Darren Star shared that Emily will keep a 'foot in both cities,' working for Agence Grateau's Rome office while staying tied to Paris. The Venetian backdrop adds a romantic twist, likely tied to Emily's evolving relationships. Fans are split—some love the Italian vibe, while others, like French President Emmanuel Macron, jokingly griped that 'Emily in Rome' feels off. Expect gorgeous shots of Roman landmarks, Parisian streets, and Venetian canals. Romance on High Heat Emily's love life stays messy and magnetic. After Gabriel chose Camille in Season 4, Emily connected with Marcello, who offers a 'real, uncomplicated spark,' per Darren Star. Season 5 will explore her pull between Marcello's grounded charm and Gabriel's lingering chemistry. Alfie, now a bigger presence, could throw a wrench into things after his Season 4 heartbreak. Lucas Bravo voiced frustration over Gabriel's repetitive arc, hinting the chef might get a fresh path, perhaps chasing a Michelin star or dealing with Geneviève's advances. Work, Friends, and Drama At Agence Grateau, Emily tackles the Rome office expansion, facing new challenges. Sylvie's past comes into focus with Yvette's arrival, adding layers to her story. Mindy's post-Eurovision journey brings financial hurdles and creative hustles. Julien and Luc keep the workplace lively, while Geneviève's rivalry with Emily could heat up, especially if she eyes Gabriel. Ahmedabad Plane Crash Aman Shukla is a post-graduate in mass communication . A media enthusiast who has a strong hold on communication ,content writing and copy writing. Aman is currently working as journalist at
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Grief Counseling With Kermit
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Jim Henson's Creature Shop has sat, for the past 16 years, on the fourth floor of an office building in Long Island City, New York, behind a metal door that looks like any other. When I opened it one gray morning after the holidays, I was greeted by a plastic Christmas tree hung with fake fish skeletons and desiccated banana peels, Oscar leering nearby from his can, and a brown, fuzzy blob sitting on a table. At first I thought it might be a complete Muppet, until I saw, a few yards beyond, a matching brown, fuzzy, headless body. As the archivist Karen Falk began to lead me on a tour of the workshop—drawers of googly eyes, noses, and 'special facial hair'; filing cabinets for 'fur' and 'slippery sleezy'; a stack of banker's boxes, one marked 'Grover,' another 'Boober'—I looked back, briefly, to catch the bulbous nose and round eyes of Junior Gorg from Fraggle Rock staring at me, or perhaps at his own body, waiting to be reunited. 'There are only three Snuffleupagi in the world,' Falk told me, gesturing toward a puppet near the entrance that she said was kind of an extra, deployed when Snuffleupagus needs a family member on set next to him. I reached out to give Snuffy's relation a little pet—his soft brown fur, curly and dense like a poodle's, was overlain with orange feathers—and scribbled a note: 'remarkably lifelike.' For a what? I later asked myself. For a giant woolly mammoth cum anteater puppet? But the space made it easy to slip across the human-Muppet divide and into Henson's world, where the realness of the puppets is sacrosanct. When I asked to take a picture of the decapitated Junior Gorg, just for my notes, Falk looked at me as if I'd asked to check under Miss Piggy's dress. 'We don't allow photos of things like that, Muppets without heads,' she tutted, and ushered me to another part of the workshop, where a handful of archival boxes had been set aside for me. After a great loss, some people find themselves communing with nature, at the seaside or deep in a forest. Others turn to spirituality, toward a temple or church. Me? I'd come to grieve with the Muppets. My father, Marshall, amassed many accolades over the course of his career—a gold record for playing bluegrass banjo on the Deliverance soundtrack; an Oscar for co-writing the script of Annie Hall; a Tony nomination for Best Book for the musical Jersey Boys, which won Best Musical in 2006 (and an Olivier Award, too)—but way cooler to me, as a kid, was the fact that for a brief stint, long before I was born, he'd been part of Henson's crew. For much of my life, I knew little about the specifics. I do remember one time being feverish and crying for a Kermit doll after a doctor's appointment, even though, despite Dad's involvement in the show, I can't remember ever watching any Muppets, or even Sesame Street, at home. The local toy store was all sold out, so Dad called in a favor, and we headed to the old Muppet offices on the Upper East Side to pick one up. While we were waiting, I watched, slack-jawed, as puppet makers working on a new creation pulled googly eyes out of thin drawers, one after another, a fever dream come to life and branded in my memory like a surrealist madeleine. After that, the Muppets all but receded from my life. [Read: The secret life of grief] That changed after my father got sick last year, when my daily life became not just a logistical mire—managing therapy appointments, speaking with doctors—but also one of constant dread: about which Dad I'd find when I walked into his room each day, his personality somehow refracted, as if I were looking at it through a prism; about whether a middle-of-the-night phone call might signify an Earth-tilting inflection point; about how devastating it was going to be to navigate the world without the beloved father I'd always looked up to. At the end of each day, like any well-adjusted individual faced with looming, profound change, I chose to run screaming as far away from reality as I could, which is how I ended up in the arms of the 1970s Muppets. I had no grand plan. I simply gravitated toward their fluffiness and goofiness as an antidote to grief. I sensed—rightly, it turned out—that they'd help keep me afloat. Dad and Henson first connected through Al Gottesman, Henson's longtime lawyer. Their mutual affinity makes total sense to me, even a generation later. They were born three years apart and grew up delighting in Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strip. They shared an off-kilter sense of humor and a reverence for the silly. Although I can't remember ever seeing Dad with a puppet on his hand, when I was growing up he would put on elaborate bedtime shows for my sister and me, starring our menagerie of stuffed animals. Using a pair of needle-nose pliers from his tool case—a bulky, black-leather valise full of primary-colored screwdrivers I liked to play with, a relic from his days attending Brooklyn Technical High School to appease his practical immigrant father—he made pince-nez out of a paper clip for my plush dachshund, Ollirina, a feisty Southern grande dame who propelled herself around by farting (my contribution); he then had her perform miraculous acts of levitation. Dad's tried-and-true finale: shooting my Ping-Pong-ball-sized plush hedgehog through a toilet-paper-roll cannon as I drumrolled on my lap. Looking back on this now that I'm a parent of three young children, I marvel that he could summon this level of creativity after dinnertime. For a few months in the mid-'70s, Dad helped Henson write a failed Broadway Muppets revue, and what would become the pilot of The Muppet Show, called 'Sex and Violence With the Muppets'—Henson's attempt to establish the Muppets as not just for kids. Dad is listed as head writer on the script, in which Nigel, Sam the Eagle, and a few other Muppets put together a 'Seven Deadly Sins' pageant to determine which sin is the most deadly. Although the final show evolved from the pilot—Kermit replaced Nigel as the emcee; a human guest star was added—you can see from the script that its style was already developed, as was its tone: equal parts outlandish and sophisticated, countercultural, never talking down to the audience. Sloth arrives, of course, during the closing credits, too late to participate. One stage direction reads, simply, 'Chaos in progress.' The script established the framework with which Henson would go on to parody a vaudeville show from all angles—the divas (Piggy), the technical malfunctions (Crazy Harry, blowing up sets left and right), the well-meaning guy trying to hold the whole ball of crazy together (Kermit). My father's contributions are impossible to disentangle from the general Muppetness of the script—collaborations work, he always told me, because they are collaborative—save for one: Despite being Brooklyn born and bred, with not a Nordic bone in his body, he is, by many accounts, the source of the Swedish Chef's accent and nonsense lexicon, the one typified by 'Hurdy, gurdy, gurdy, bork bork bork!' The character had originated with Henson in the '60s. Back then, he'd been German. For reasons lost to Muppetdom, at some point the character moved northwest, to a place with more centralized health care. And he needed an accent to match. I loved listening to Dad parody foreign languages. He liked to throw off telemarketers by answering the phone as a hard-of-hearing woman from some indeterminate Latin American country, or as an eccentric Central European man, characterized by a sibilant, Peter Sellers–as–Strangelove delivery that would typically escalate into a shriek and send the person on the other end skedaddling to their next call. So I was not surprised to learn that, decades earlier, Dad had apparently reduced the Henson puppeteer Frank Oz to tears by mimicking languages during brainstorming sessions. He later made an ersatz-Swedish tape for Henson to listen to on his commute into the city from his home in Bedford. 'He would drive to work trying to make a chicken sandwich in mock Swedish or make a turkey casserole in mock Swedish,' Henson's son Brian told Jim's biographer, remembering having heard my dad's tape. 'It was the most ridiculous thing you had ever seen, and people at traffic lights used to stop and sort of look at him a little crazy.' All of this I learned from books, from interviews with Muppet staffers, and by emailing Falk, the Henson archivist. But the bulk of my embedding in Muppetdom over the past year involved watching The Muppet Show with my husband and three kids on weekend evenings, our world cocooned between the real, live present and a completely nonsensical 1970s. I'd slice up some apples and we'd cackle together as Rita Moreno flung a noodly Muppet man around set in a particularly violent tango; as Zero Mostel, only mildly indignant that a Muppet was eating him during his cold open, helped wash down his own arm with a little water; as Gene Kelly taught Kermit to tap-dance on the piano. [Read: The father-daughter routine that transformed our family life] Given what I'd learned, was it a cosmic sign that my youngest, just 3 years old, started to develop an obsession with the Swedish Chef? He took to running around the apartment, crowing his bastardized version of the Chef's already bastardized Swedish and then, mimicking his new Nordic hero, flinging into the air whatever he had handy. Sometimes it was a stuffed animal; other times it was hard objects, which would necessitate a stern lecture (after my husband and I had taken cover) about the dangers of throwing things up, because they tend to come down, even if the Chef's flapjacks do not. After my son got a Swedish Chef action-figure set that included a small chicken and a handful of cooking tools, he would sit on the ground, brow furrowed in concentration, making the cleaver-wielding chef hop after the chicken—or sometimes, in keeping with Muppet sensibility, vice versa. My daughters became obsessed with 'Pigs in Space,' a recurring Muppet sketch parodying Star Trek and other space operas of the 1960s and '70s. They erupted in cheers whenever the USS Swinetrek flew across the screen, indicating that the sketch was back again. The setup is that three pigs are flying through the cosmos—Captain Link Hogthrob, Dr. Julius Strangepork, and Miss Piggy as first mate—and … nothing really happens. John Cleese shows up as a pirate and tries to make a call from a payphone on the ship, while his parrot, who is in love with him, gripes that Cleese is neglecting her and should take her to dinner with all his doubloons. The ship is invaded by two alien beings, who turn out to be the Swedish Chef and his chicken, and after they leave, the pigs get bored. When the USS Swinetrek nears the end of the universe, where its crew will finally discover the meaning and purpose of life, the dinner bell rings, and the pigs get sidetracked. Miss Piggy is routinely degraded, asked by the boars to do the laundry or make more swill, though the audience understands that she's smarter and tougher than her male co-stars. According to Oz, Miss Piggy's puppeteer, her toughness was hard-won. In multiple interviews, he has spoken about his need to understand the complete biographies of the characters he portrayed, even if viewers don't share that need. In Oz's mind, Miss Piggy was born on a farm, loved her father very much, and was grief-stricken when he died in a tractor accident. As her mother's subsequent suitors turned their attention to Miss Piggy, a single path forward emerged: to leave. She was later forced to do some things she wasn't proud of as she clawed her way to diva-dom, including appearing in a bacon commercial. Does any of that come through the screen as she floats around in outer space? I suppose that, for some viewers, it does—that having a deep understanding of Miss Piggy's character somehow enabled Oz and the other puppeteers to present her simulated world as real enough that the audience would jump into it with her, feetfirst, willingly suspending disbelief. Or maybe that's not why it works. 'It's just so weird,' my third grader said to me one night, with a snort. 'Like, why are there even pigs in space?' I didn't experience what others warned me I might, after the months of decline that led to Dad's death late last year: picking up the phone to call him and forgetting that there would be no one on the other end, looking up from the sidewalk at the window where he worked for decades, expecting to see the light on and being knocked sideways that it was dark. I never forgot. I never expected the light to be on. But occasionally, I'd find myself dropping from one reality straight through to another, something most likely aided by my living just eight blocks from where I grew up. My neighborhood is saturated with memories spanning my whole life. Passing a street corner, I would suddenly reverse-age four decades and see Dad's belt buckle sliding along my tricycle's handlebars, because I was so hot and sweaty and tired that I simply couldn't pedal one more inch, and he was pulling me around that corner, home. I'd be running the Lower Loop in Central Park, where we used to take our daily afternoon walks, and I'd pass a busker playing the fiddle and have to stop, hands on knees, to catch my breath, remembering the Flatt and Scruggs Dad played through his computer speakers. These temporal shifts through eras were uncontrolled, unexpected, all-encompassing. My scrim between reality and memory, truth and simulation, had become porous, faulty. Like the Swedish Chef, who starts making a turtle soup only to find that the turtle has woken up and is trying to escape, my reality was pitched, slightly, on its axis. The first time one of these temporal shifts through eras, one of these free falls from today back to childhood, happened was a few nights after the burial. My husband, kids, and I gathered, the children freshly showered and damp-haired, and put on the Muppets, as we'd done, at that point, for months. The episode featured Señor Wences, the ventriloquist whose main act involved Johnny, a boy made from Wences's hand, on which he stuck two googly eyes, and on top of which he draped a ridiculous orange wig. His other star performers were a bespectacled chicken named Cecilia (Wences: 'Second name?'; Cecilia: 'Chicken') and Pedro, a surly talking head (literally just a head, not an MSNBC type) who, after a train accident that decapitated the poor puppet, spent his life, disembodied, in a box. The episode's conceit was that Kermit has decided to do something new: a puppet show! 'It's a complete change of pace, folks,' he said to cheers. 'Yes, it's a real first!' Toward the end, Wences held up an egg and asked Cecilia Chicken to identify it. As she replied, softly and directly, 'My son' (rhymes with moan), a memory of childhood weekend breakfasts welled up from deep in my subconscious, collapsing time just as the puppets on-screen were collapsing their simulation. I saw the kitchen table, the oval wooden one my father had waxed by hand until it shone. I felt its slight stickiness beneath my hands. And by the stove was Dad, apron halved and tied around his waist, holding up an egg reverently, sighing, lovingly pronouncing it 'my son!' in Salamancan-inflected English, then cracking it, with a flourish, into a cast-iron skillet. He used to do that with eggs. I'd completely forgotten. For a moment, I stayed there at the kitchen table, giggling. I stayed with the feeling of being closer to my children's age than middle age; closer to those evenings spent cross-legged and damp-haired myself, watching my dad turn stuffed animals into performers; closer still to a moment years before my birth, when, across town at the Henson studios, in a healthy body with long legs kicked up on the desk in front of him, my dad held a bulky tape recorder to his mouth, paused, then started up for the first time in ersatz Swedish, the beginning of a thread that would reach out, decades later, and tether him to me. Article originally published at The Atlantic Solve the daily Crossword
