Liars and Saints

 We live in the wilderness--sometimes, this is cute. It's cute when groundhogs frolic in our backyard. Or bunnies. Or when my daughter tries to talk to the birds. I'm reminded of the woodsy interludes in "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty." The moment when Aurora shares her deepest feelings with a barn owl. Things are less cute when I consider the problem of waste disposal. One of the most horrifying things I've ever seen is a "garbage can invasion" on a Friday night. My spouse and I were returning from a film. One raccoon popped out of the trash can. Then--I swear--I saw ten or twelve more. One after another after another after another. Spilling from the can's bowels. I'm led to think of that moment in "Alien," when an encephalopod "births itself"--the "cost" is one young man, and specifically that man's abdomen. Like many other issues, garbage in my town is an opportunity for virtue signaling. A prefer...

  "The Lost Boys" is a musical about Ronald Reagan. He appears on a TV screen, giving a lecture about family values; later, he takes the shape of Broadway star Paul Nolan, a nerdy guy in a suit who talks about what happens when the country is "overrun" with single moms. (You might think, why does Paul Nolan have such an apparently small role? Just you wait.) Pitted against Paul Nolan is Shoshana Bean, who just wants a job, a romance, an intact family, and a sense of instant community. Bean's desperation leads her to make questionable choices--should she really agree to work at a video rental outlet without anything like a basic "candidate interview"? If a new friend makes approving remarks about Goldwater, should Bean stick around? Bean becomes aware of her mistakes; before it's too late, she grabs a stake and murders a trickster vampire. This raises questions. Bean may have eliminated Ronald Reagan--but is she any closer to a job, a romance, an in...

  "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...