Liars and Saints

 Like Anne Lamott, I'm not a great fan of Mother's Day. It's not clear to me why parenting demands a celebration--no one puts a gun to your head and requires you to become a parent. So the expectation of being celebrated--this feels narcissistic. At least until our culture establishes a Single Person's Day, and a Gay Uncle's Day, among several other random days that come to mind. Recently, the Times ran a letter by a single woman who had an inner conflict. A friend was marrying for a second time--this friend was staging a splashy second wedding. The letter writer makes an annual trip to a particular concert with another single friend. There is a kneejerk reaction: A second wedding is "more important" than a single person's ritual. But why should this be the case? I admired the Times's response: Cite a scheduling conflict, go to the concert, and move on with your life. My daughter brought home a Mother's Day card. In one spot, the paraprofession...

  One error of the current revival of "Chess" is a wish to make the characters likeable. Trumper's bad behavior is "explained" through a new subplot about mental illness. There are machinations around Florence--but these machinations do *not* include lies about her dead father. Her father is, in fact, alive; he pops up at the end. (Heaven forbid we leave the theater with a feeling of sadness!) I do not like or understand "Chess"--and I think it should be retired. But--watching clips of Judy Kuhn--I can get a sense of a slightly weightier "Chess," a better "Chess" than the one we have to swallow in 2026. Kuhn is capable of acting--she seems brittle and conflicted. This is more than Lea Michele can offer--with Michele, we get an unconvincing pantomime of distress. We also get some loud "Mariah"-inflected pop numbers. As others have observed, the current "Chess" is half-redeemed by its Anatoly. Nicholas Christopher ...

  Lena Dunham reminds me of Amy Winehouse. You listen to a tape of the pre-adolescent Winehouse, and the voice is already there--the talent is undeniable. And Dunham's major movie--"Tiny Furniture," essentially the work of an undergraduate--is a masterful comedy. It's the kind of thing that earns you random emails from Nora Ephron. (Ephron lobbied for Lena Dunham's company.) Amy Winehouse didn't want fame; she wanted to be a jazz singer in tiny nightclubs. Lena Dunahm didn't want fame; she wanted to express herself. The early years of "Girls" are a horror story. Dunham teams up with a "friend," a substantially older woman, Jenni Konner. Instead of mentoring Dunham, Konner views her child-colleague as a kind of meal ticket. In the first season, Dunham begins to show signs of disordered eating. Konner does not offer help. She approaches Dunham and says, "The producers are worried that your weight seems too normal. The show doesn'...

 My spouse and I knew nothing about colors; we thought a reasonable choice for the exterior of the house was red. "No," said the contractor. She doesn't mince words. "You do not live in a farmhouse. Choose again." I think our next dream was to live in a sleek charcoal box--of the style that Bosch uses in the show "Bosch." We were inspired by the concept of the "upside-down house" in Los Angeles. You enter the house--it's the kitchen. Then you walk *down* stairs to reach various basement bedrooms. "No," said the contractor. "That is not your house. Think light and bright . Think about sea foam, yellow, or green." Combining yellow and green immediately made me daydream about jaundice. Or stomach viruses. Did I want the house to resemble the face of a sick person? I had not imagined that this would be quite such a process. I wish I had entered the discussions with less impetuousness and more humility (and this is the stor...

  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' 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...