Liars and Saints

  "The Invite" is a showcase for Seth Rogen, who just wants to remember what it's like to have sex. Penelope Cruz has questions about Rogen's self-esteem. "Do you like yourself?" she asks. "Would you have sex with yourself?" "Yes! I'm the ONLY one who fucks me. I fuck myself often!" I get the sense that Rogen's best lines may be improvised. Having learned that his noisy neighbors like to host orgies, he tries to negotiate. "It just gets very loud. Maybe take the BIG sex parties offsite, to a motel. You know, if it's a birthday or an anniversary. Or Arbor Day...." Penelope Cruz wonders aloud which particular birthday Valentina--a favored sex partner--celebrated at a recent dinner. "Next time you're preparing to enter her," says Rogen, "you should just count her rings...." Rogen's performance reaches its climax when he tries to perform a sultry dance, then trips, falls on a stack of books, a...

 Maggie Haberman's title--"Regime Change"--is multi-faceted. It's a reference to some of Donald's Tweets in the buildup to the conflict in Iran: "Time for a Regime Change!" It's also a reference to one of the classic books in the "current events publishing" world: "Game Change." Finally, it's an invitation to think about the word "regime." We might imagine that the change was from Biden to Trump. But--in the Biden years--had the Trump regime really ended? Is it possible that it simply changed? Trump 1.0 was somewhat cautious--at least when you compare him to Trump 2.0. Haberman suggests that America would have been better off enduring two Trump terms back to back; the 2020 Trump would have been unpopular and therefore hamstrung. Instead, Trump 2.0 could profit from American dissatisfaction toward the (deeply dissatisfying) choices of Joe Biden. Trump 2.0 is like Ursula the Sea Witch--*after* she has morphed and assum...

 I don't live in Montclair, but I'm there often. A feature I dislike is the canonization of one resident, Stephen Colbert. Anytime there is widespread adulation for anyone, I become skeptical. Colbert's slightly patronizing ads for the "Montclair Film Festival" drive me batty. A better facet is the Montclair Book Center. This eccentric bookstore may or may not carry all of the current major titles you'd expect, but it does have tattered four-dollar mass market editions of forgotten Golden Age mysteries. Also, hardcover editions of old titles are kept *separate* from the paperbacks--so you get the thrill of discovery TWICE. It's like two bookstores within one building. The last thing I'll say about Montclair is that there are several "Bosch" houses up in the hills. These are upside-down houses--they are perched almost on top of Manhattan. Sometimes, the "consumption" of volume and surface area is astonishing; it's exciting just t...

 The NYT says that "West Side Story" is Bernstein's classic mix of "discord and schmaltz." Bernstein likely believes, deep down, that he is constructing an opera--and that is suggested by his self-conscious song title, "Quintet." We are meant to think of Mozart. I love "Quintet" above all the other numbers because the discord and the schmaltz are right there together. Singing on his own, Tony can be just a bit insufferable: Oh moon, grow bright-- And make this endless day, endless night-- Tonight! But Anita cuts through the nonsense, thinking about her *own* lover: He'll come in hot and tired. So what? Don't matter if he's tired-- As long as he's hot. Sondheim could simply have the rival gang members puffing themselves up, but instead he chooses to look at self-deception. He has the gang members half-acknowledge their plans to use illegal weapons. "Well, IF things start to go too far...." With this kind of writing, S...

  I know a wealthy WASP. She attended Saint Ann’s and Yale; she then became a stay-at-home mom. The family owns multiple properties on various continents. The WASP’s parents—two elderly alcoholics—host elaborate parties with baffling rules and codicils. If you violate a rule, the WASP family speaks laughingly about you as if you aren’t in the room. If someone wrongly suggests that you know a great deal about Jane Austen, then the WASP produces trivia questions to stump you. Once you are stumped, the WASP seems satisfied. She then hands you supplemental Austen material—“as a gift.”   The WASP’s mother likes to pretend to complain about when the WASP was a child star in the City Opera revival of “A Little Night Music.” Of course, “Claire Bloom had the Gingold role—and Claire was  not  friendly.”   These are all terrible behaviors—and I was happy to see them parodied in “Pineapple Street.” A wealthy couple leaves their townhouse to one child and his “gold-digger” w...

An annoying thing happened at my child's school. His teacher inexplicably disappeared for three months--and the district, frantic for coverage, hired a sixteen-year-old replacement. No, she was not sixteen. But she was pretty close. My shrewd son quickly sussed out the truth--the new teacher was not adequately familiar with her "steering wheel." No one was captain of the ship. This caused distress for my son--who could not express his distress in complex sentences. So he began to pull down his pants. Pulling down one's pants is a not uncommon choice in the context of a speech delay. But the choice was terrifying for the sixteen-year-old--who chose not to share her concerns with my spouse or with me. To me, this choice has just a whiff of (unexamined) homophobia. It's hard to believe--if my child had a mom--the situation would have been handled in the same way. Long story short. My son essentially lost three months of instructional time because the classroom was sp...