Liars and Saints

 My daughter is falling for books. Not reading. She has no interest in phonics (and in this way she reminds me of me). But she likes to listen--especially to the tales of Jack and Annie in the Magic Tree House. I love what Susie herself does with words. She knows that her doctor--Dr. Buono--is friendly, so she has invented a kind of shorthand; the doctor is now "Dr. Elmo." Susie knows that a hotel is a source of excitement, like "show and tell." So a hotel is now a "hoe and tell." Aware that dragons are a common wellspring of terror, Susie sometimes speaks breathlessly about Boris Karloff and "Victor Dragon-stein." So I appreciate Donna Leon's recent thoughts on words--she has written about how words become seductive (below). One of the best kids' books I know of is--literally--nonsense. It's James Marshall's "A Pocketful of Nonsense," and it features Marshall in a "Dr. Seuss" mode. There was an old man of Blac...

 Scientists write about "deep holes" in your personal timeline--moments when you seem to age by ten million years. You were thirty yesterday; today, you are one hundred years old. In my youth, I would have skimmed over this--but, now, I see the brutal reality. In various photos, I have a full head of hair--then, suddenly, I do not. "A receding hairline can be charming," says my shrink, because, yes, I talk about this in therapy. (Joyce Carol Oates recently complained about inane navel-gazing in fiction. "I'm reading Percival Everett on the history of lynching--then I have to read some white man's thoughts on his latest divorce?" ....I empathize, but maybe not every rough patch in a life has to be tantamount to a history of lynching.) There is no universe in which I will feel charmed by my own receding hairline--so I just change the subject. My spouse and I go to see the movie "Tuner," which features a young man named Leo Woodall. And Wood...

  The NYT is celebrating 50 years of Sandra Boynton in print. I'd like to nominate one Boynton title as the greatest--it's "The Belly Button Book." In this tale, a group of hippos celebrate their belly buttons. We always like to get balloons... And I know why. Do you? It's because we like to think balloons Have belly buttons, too. Boynton then moves the action to "Belly Button Beach": Where hippos like to stand around In bathing suits too little-- Because we hope you will admire  The button in our middle. But life's pleasures are fleeting, and Boynton has a brutal conclusion, surprising and inevitable. We love to show our belly b's-- We show them off with pride. But not in chilly wintertime-- When belly buttons hide. No, not in chilly wintertime-- When belly buttons hide. A mic-drop kind of performance. Not a word is wasted.

 I have made clear that my own personal Broadway diva is Victoria Clark. I'm a great fan of Clark's intelligence and cunning--her watchfulness. Good acting--which is rare in a musical, even a Broadway musical--involves a magic trick. You have to have full control over your eyes; the eyes have to telegraph a message. I am actually in the place and in the time that the words of this musical are referring to. I am not in New York City, in a theater, in 2026. Whether she is speaking or not, Clark has "Olivia Colman" eyes. She is a brilliant performer. All that said, Heather Headley is also on my Mount Rushmore. Headley's slightly mannered performances feel "extreme"--they remind me of the work of Liza Minnelli. Either you love Headley or you do not. I think she gets away with intense melodrama because she conveys a sense of utter conviction. Here--for Miscast--she is performing a colleague's big number, "Endless Night." On one level, she is sin...

 It took me a long while to get to "Mindhunter," because I prefer procedurals. I get nervous if something is billed as experimental. And "Mindhunter" has problems; it has one of the most tedious "opening credits" sequences I know of. It features a gay actor whose gayness seems almost palpable--yet no one speculates about the related character being possibly "in the closet." (Knowing David Fincher, I'm sure that the casting of a gay actor, Jonathan Groff, in an apparently "heterosexual" role is part of a bigger strategy. The strategy is unclear to me for now.) But there are things I like very much. One genre of old movie--"let's put on a show"--dramatizes the conflicts within a group of creative people as we move from "table read" to opening night. That's essentially what "Mindhunter" is. It's the story of a creative act. Three oddballs decide that they are going to rewrite the rules of murde...

 What we lack is a terrific blockbuster scary movie. Last summer, quite early, we were all treated to "Final Destination: Bloodlines," an experience of pure pleasure. There is nothing like "Bloodlines" right now. Summer should mean thrills--that's because of Steven Spielberg. That's because of "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park." Spielberg's current offering--"Disclosure Day"--is bloodless and boring. At a recent screening, my spouse and I both fell asleep. The best I can offer in terms of Spielberg-ian wonder, at the moment, is the soundtrack from the Broadway musical "Six." My family listens in the car. Why--asks my daughter--why would Henry VIII murder people in his own clan? I explain that he sustained a head injury in a jousting accident; this led to bad choices, and because he was King, no one questioned him. My daughter then wants to know how--if two of the Queens are dead--how is it possible that they are singing on...