Forget that mythical "Friends" reunion that's never going to happen — "Friends! The Musical!" is on track for an off-Broadway run.

The unauthorized parody's song titles should resonate with fans of the long-running NBC sitcom. Courtesy of the musical's co-writers, Bob and Tobly McSmith, the soundtrack includes: "The Only Coffee Shop in New York City," "45 Grove Street — How Can We Afford This Place" and "Hey Ugly Naked Guy Who Lives Across the Street!" Oh, yeah, and "How You Doing, Ladies?"

Tobly McSmith said a "Friends" parody "was the next logical step" in a sequence of almost-homages that has included send-ups of "Full House," "Saved by the Bell" and "Beverly Hills, 90210."

Midway through James Cameron's 2009 sci-fi action film "Avatar," set on the distant planet of Pandora, lead character Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) observes, "Out there is the true world. In here is the dream."

He's referring to his ability in the film to inhabit an alien body, and not, of course, a theme park. Yet Disney, at its Animal Kingdom park in Orlando, Fla., will on May 27 attempt to transport guests to an otherworldly reality -- a place not inhabited by princesses and castles and singing ghosts but by floating mountains, a bioluminescent forest and mysterious creatures who rustle plants just out of sight of guests. 

Pandora -- the World of Avatar, which was inspired by the Cameron film but does not feature any of its main characters, aims to put a true-to-life spin on the fantasy universe. Situated in Animal Kingdom, Pandora will play up themes of conservation as it presents a fragile world on the road to rehabilitation. Set about a generation after the conflict of the film, much of Pandora, which we visited as part of a preview today, conveys a tranquil setting. 

After intense criticism over a festival-preview trailer that many fans found sexist, Hard's Gary Richards has made his first statement on the controversy. 

The Hard Summer preview clip, written and directed by Agata Alexander, featured several male headlining DJs wearing outsized prosthetic breasts, ostensibly to satirize the lack of women artists at dance music festivals. 

In an emailed statement to The Times, Richards said: 

How could no one behind Hard Summer’s new preview trailer suspect that so many fans would hate it? 

The clip, which can be watched here and does contain imagery that could offend, may have been done with the intent to admirably satirize the lack of women on music festival bills (including Hard's). But doing so by putting gigantic prosthetic breasts on top-billed male acts including DJ Snake, What So Not, Party Favor and Claude VonStroke?  

Even though the clip was written and directed by a woman, the instant backlash has left a festival — one with plenty of other issues to deal with — scrambling to save face.

For someone who won a Tony four years ago for fearlessly flying on a trapeze in “Pippin,” off-stage Andrea Martin is endearingly self-effacing and excitable. Over eggs and coffee at a cafe on the Upper West Side, where she’s rented the same apartment since the early 1970s, Martin discussed her love of the circus, her Armenian roots and the possibility of an “SCTV” reunion.

Currently in production on the third season of the caustic Hulu comedy “Difficult People,” the actress, 70 and fabulous, can also be seen in “Great News."

Over the weekend, over 40,000 LGBTQ-friendly people and lovers of drag descended upon the Los Angeles Convention Center for RuPaul's DragCon. In its third year, the celebration of “the art of drag, queer culture and self-expression for all" featured panel discussions, drag "herstory" sessions, and fashion and makeup workshops for men and women.

Think Comic-Con, but for drag queens.

One of the most attended panels of the weekend was titled “What Is Drag in Trump’s America?,” hosted by the new purveyors of scathing political takes, Teen Vogue. It featured the outspoken Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka O’Hara and Alaska, standout and fan favorites from "RuPaul's Drag Race" -- which, in its ninth season, moved from Logo TV to VH1 this year. 

"Hamilton" fans began arriving at the Hollywood Pantages about 8:30 p.m. Saturday. By Sunday morning, the crowd  lined up on Argyle Street had swelled to hundreds,  all trying to snag tickets as they went on sale at 10 a.m.

Although tickets were also available online and by phone, some thought their chances would be better in person. Times staff writer Jessica Gelt was on the scene. 

Every day I like to hit a few licks to see if the old fingers are still working. And I really believe it's still getting better every day.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Always on his mind

The 2017 Tribeca Film Festival came to a close Saturday with the announcement of the two winners for the Audience Awards, sponsored by AT&T. 

"The Divine Order," directed and written by Petra Volpe, won the narrative award for its tale of Swiss suffrage in the 1970s. 

Winning the documentary award was "Hondros," which was directed by Greg Campbell and written by Campbell and Jenny Golden, about the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Chris Hondros, who died in Libya in 2011.

A closer look at the land of Pandora. The map of the Mo'ara territory reveals how Pandora has changed a generation after the conflict of between the local Na'vi and the human invaders over the mining of unobtanium. 

The park covers an expansive 12 acres of property, but the map itself extends well past the boundaries set by Disney's imagineers.

At Walt Disney World's new Pandora -- the World of Avatar, guests can order something that sort of tastes like a cheeseburger. Except it doesn't look like a cheeseburger. It's a doughy white pod, filled with burger fixings.

The story, Disney Imagineers said, is that humans who have inhabited Pandora miss the food of home, only now they have to use alien ingredients. 

Also on the menu is green beer -- a light, wheaty ale made by Terrapin Beer Co. Restaurant staff said the initial plan was for a blue beer -- the Na'Vi, after all, are a blue-skinned race -- but that proved a tougher task using natural ingredients.