Tim Dunleavy

My grandfather was an anchor baby. It turns out the best case against birthright citizenship is Donald.

wow! Rand Paul begins Markwayne Mullin's confirmation hearing by confronting him about comments Mullin made describing Paul as a "freakin' snake" and "celebrating" Paul getting assaulted "I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force"

@MJMcKean So moving to see you there.

Goodnight, Rob Goodnight, Michele Goodnight, Oscars

“But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the Strait of Hormuz is open and people are having a wonderful time!”

The jokes write themselves.

Hard to pick a favorite recording of a Neil Sedaka song, but this is one of the best from one of the very best. R.I.P. youtube.com/watch?v=igRiPq…

Red Robin is a case study in how to kill a restaurant chain from the inside out. In 2015, the stock hit $92.90 per share. Revenue peaked in 2017 at $1.4 billion across 573 locations. Families loved the place. Bottomless fries. Birthday parties. “Gourmet” burgers when that word still meant something in casual dining. The brand had real equity. Then management panicked about rising minimum wages and made the single worst decision in the company’s history: they fired all the bussers. January 2018. CEO Steve Carley cut bussers across every location, eliminated expeditors, and replaced kitchen managers with generic “back-of-house” roles. The logic was pure spreadsheet thinking. Labor costs were rising, so remove labor. The savings looked great in quarterly earnings. The second and third order effects were catastrophic. Tables stopped getting cleared. Wait times ballooned. Walkaways increased 85% year over year. 75% of the dine-in traffic loss came during peak hours, the exact window when the restaurant makes money. Ticket times out of the kitchen jumped a full minute on average. Customers who waited 20 minutes for a table and another 20 for a burger stopped coming back. Red Robin’s own CEO at the time, Denny Marie Post, admitted the damage was self-inflicted. And here’s the compounding problem. While Red Robin was gutting its own service model, it simultaneously launched a “Tavern Double” value menu at $6.99 to drive traffic. Orders of the cheap burgers jumped from 9% to 15% of all orders, which cratered the average check. So Red Robin was now serving worse food, slower, in a dirtier restaurant, at a lower price point. That combination is how you enter a death spiral. Meanwhile, 16% of locations were in malls. Mall traffic was already declining. Those locations saw 5.5% sales drops versus 3% at standalone stores, dragging the whole system down. Management acknowledged the problem quarter after quarter and did nothing about it for years. Five CEOs in 10 years. Think about that. The one leader who provided stability, Michael Snyder, was with the chain from 1979 to 2005. After that, it was a revolving door. Every new CEO launched a new turnaround plan. Every plan was abandoned by the next CEO. The North Star plan. The First Choice plan. New menu rollouts. Loyalty program reboots. None of it addressed the core issue: they’d trained an entire generation of customers to think of Red Robin as the place where the service is terrible. The contrast with Chili’s makes the failure even clearer. Kevin Hochman took over Chili’s in 2022 and did the opposite of what Red Robin did. He simplified the menu, invested in operations, launched a $10.99 “3 for Me” deal that went viral on TikTok, and let the food speak for itself. Chili’s just posted 31% same-store sales growth. Red Robin’s comparable revenue was down 1.2% for all of 2024. Both chains were in roughly the same position three years ago. One chain invested in the customer experience. The other spent a decade cutting it. Red Robin’s $65M market cap and Chili’s $3.3B market cap tell you which approach works. The stock went from $92 to $3.61. That’s what happens when you optimize for the quarterly earnings call instead of the customer walking through the door.

On Feb. 4, Matt Selman, The Simpsons EP, texted Christine Nangle with an idea. Their friend, Dan McQuade, planned to write about their Philly-themed episode. But he passed away before he could do so. They decided to add him to it — days before it aired: inquirer.com/sports/dan-mcq…

Under Secretary.

So, I recently got a call from David Boreanaz. He was kind enough to share that he was offered the series & thinking about it. He wanted to know how I felt about the reboot, etc... If anybody can do it, HE CAN! I'm 💯 on board! It is going to be great! #PureClass #Jimbo

.@jamestalarico: I've had a lot of interviews with national media. No one's ever asked me about the cost of housing. No one's asked me about the cost of prescription drugs. The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes. The only minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Trans people are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. We are all focused on the wrong 1%. Trans people aren't taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools. It's the billionaires and their puppet politicians.

That Bunny was AMAZING. Elmo thinks he should be called Good Bunny! Elmo loves you, Mr. Good Bunny! ❤️🎶🐰

Many of you may have missed this, but the little boy who Bad Bunny handed his Grammy to at the Super Bowl was Liam Ramos! Amazing!

Imma with you

Imma be honest guys I'd rather watch Bad Bunny and not understand a single word than watch Kid Rock

@BlvdSubway Glass dome for the Liberty Bell is good; making the 1st block mostly open space, good. But the rest? Visitor Center is too far from Independence Hall, Constitution Center should not be underground (bad from both a practical & symbolic viewpoint).

A piece of Forgotten Philadelphia history is Ed Bacon's return in the 1990s to defend his vision for Independence Mall. Do you think this version is better than the current design that beat it?

@HollywoodComet Wonder if he was related to Johnny Staccato...

Now Watching Johnny Allegro (1949)

@jakealdacoffey Saw this in the lobby of the Bucks County Playhouse.

My grandpa is really touched by all the love he’s gotten today. We had a lowkey night celebrating his 90th birthday, which was full of laughs. After dinner, we went home and ate rum cake a friend of his baked. A perfect end to the night.

@jakealdacoffey The first celebrity I ever wrote a fan letter to. It was 1974, and I was eight. He'll always be one of my heroes. Happy birthday, Alan!

Happy 90th birthday to my grandpa!! He’s my biggest role model.