Liars and Saints

  In 2006, GLAAD listed "all" of the gay characters on TV--but omitted Waylon Smithers from the list. (This error was corrected in 2008.) Smithers is not the star of "Burns' Heir," but his role is notable. We first see him giving a sponge bath to Burns--Burns complains that the sponge in question "has sharp corners." In his crazed wish to please Burns, Smithers forgets himself. He has an idea to find a better sponge--but he hastily leaves the *offending* sponge on Burns' head. The weight of the square sponge almost causes a drowning episode. It's this near-death experience that inspires Burns to search for an heir. ("It won't be you, Smithers, because you will have the honor of being buried alive *next to* my skeleton.") It's a sign of Smithers's deep devotion that he tolerates the indignity of the "heir contest." In the climactic moments of the show, Smithers watches in horror as Burns tumbles into a deep pit (a...

  An element of Gothic storytelling is "the inexplicable." A shape in the doorway might be a vampire--or it might be just an odd effect of lighting. I love this uncertainty--it's maybe the thing that I love *most* in storytelling. I love it in true crime, as well; I almost feel deflated when a crime is actually solved. One of my favorite stories--about the DC townhouse--has three men conspiring to murder a friend. The friends claim they are innocent--but the facts suggest that this is almost impossible. But if they *are* guilty, then they are living (year after year!) with a terrible secret. This seems (additionally) impossible--at least to me. Patrick Radden Keefe is part of a dying breed--the breed of "the star journalist." His golden era began with "Say Nothing," in which he described a cold case from Ireland's troubled history. At the end of the book, he actually solved the case. He presented a hypothesis that seemed more or less airtight. He f...

 I was raised on Celine Dion; her work inspires a special mixture of reverence and disdain. I think her most questionable move was to release a song called "I'm Alive" shortly after the devastation of 9/11. If this was meant as a tribute to victims of 9/11, it was difficult not to hear an *implied* title: "I'm Alive---and You Are Not." I did not see Marla Mindelle in "Titanique"--I saw Dee Roscioli in the off-Broadway version. This was a special night for me; some kind of Kansas City Chiefs game was occurring, and I did not have to watch. I sat among many other gay people--also, oddly, the Broadway performer Eva Noblezada--and I enjoyed seeing a heavyset man in the role of Frances Fisher (mother of "Rose" on the Titanic). This man flirted with me and tried to sit on my lap. Marla Mindelle has all of my love. I watch her clips regularly. Among her many gifts is her incisive reading of Celine Dion's "crowd talk." Because Dion ...

  In my town, there is a great deal of virtue-signaling around coffee. There is a desire for "coffee purity," which means that you can be judged for visiting Starbucks. In fact, the workers at the rival shop, "Village Cafe," wear tee shirts that say, "Friends Don't Let Friends Drink Starbucks." (This is the closest to overt nastiness that anyone gets--anyone in Maplewood.) People were ecstatic when a new local option opened--the option was called "Elitist Coffee." It's really called that. Not "Elite Coffee," which would also be absurd. "Elitist." People wanted to pretend to love this local shop--though its hours (W-Sunday only) were bizarre, its seats were uncomfortable, and its counter was unequipped for accepting non-cash payments. This sort of situation breeds cognitive dissonance within a Maplewood citizen. The citizen wants to (loudly) proclaim his or her love for Elitist Coffee--but you can only tolerate so many ...

  A "heat check" is a moment when an actor hijacks a film or show for three or four minutes--the actor becomes something like an MVP in just a very short span of time. On "The Pitt," occasional heat checks come from the student doctors. These students are young and dumb; they say tasteless things. The awkwardness is compelling. For example, one student doctor recently concluded that a mother was a psychopath, because her "stressful-situation face" did not seem adequately "agonized." The other student-doctor--Ogilvie--cannot tolerate when patients reveal themselves to be flawed. I think this intolerance is fairly typical for people in their twenties. Ogilvie joins Dr. McKay on an "outreach trip." (It seems clear that McKay has selected Ogilvie *because* of his frequent discomfort. At least on a subconscious level, McKay wants to give Ogilvie a trial-by-fire.) Within one minute of meeting his new patient, Ogilvie falsely concludes that an...

  No writer alive today is more fun for me than Anthony Horowitz. As he has said in interviews, Horowitz writes just for himself. He is not concerned with market trends. He is not looking for Netflix deals. He writes because he has to write. There is a well-populated world inside his head; he knows how to describe that world. His sentences are elegant, and his stories are surprising, well-structured, and weirdly plausible. The Horowitz/Hawthorne series uses a grammatical or writerly term in each title: "The Word Is Murder," "The Sentence Is Death," "A Line to Kill," "The Twist of a Knife," "Close to Death," "A Deadly Episode." In the newest novel, "Episode," Horowitz is filming a series based on his own books. There is an actor to play Horowitz's detective buddy, Daniel Hawthorne. When the actor is murdered, it looks like a case of professional jealousy "run amok." Is the killer a costar? An agent? A sc...