Liars and Saints

In my twenties, I could eat more or less with impunity--quantity did not matter--and though I knew a rude awakening would happen in my thirties, I nevertheless didn't *know* a rude awakening would happen in my thirties. *One of my wisest friends had advice. She was discussing the problem of eating-while-you-are-cooking. This is a problem because, as you cook, you have many delicious foods laid out before you. And you sample--and sample--and sample--over a forty, fifty-minute span, so that, by the time dinner is ready, you've actually consumed one dinner. You've had a dinner, and now you're sitting down to a second dinner. My friend listened to this complaint, and said: "Chew gum while you cook." And my mind exploded. *Sometimes, my shrink interrupts my dieting stories with horror. "Butter? Don't cook with butter!" And: "Red peppers will do strange things to your stomach, especially as you age." And: "Remove the skin from th...

There are three memoirs out, all exploring mental illness: "The Scar," "The Edge of Every Day," and "Little Panic." This genre is like candy to me, and I very much appreciate writers who acknowledge that mental illness generally isn't something you recover from. A favorite craziness memoir of mine is "Monkey Mind," where the writer admits that he sometimes wears thick pads in his armpits to control his sweating at work, and also where the writer says that repeated viewings of "Singing in the Rain" sometimes (sort of) help. My own response to intense social anxiety--which visits me pretty regularly--is this: *Search, on your phone, "how to handle social anxiety." You'd think reading this kind of article once would solve the problem, but as I'm nervously awaiting an innocuous encounter, I forget all the tips. Also, just doing the search gives you something to do, and this allows your monkey mind to be (br...

The NYT listed 50 great memoirs yesterday. Fine. But some light (or light-ish) celebrity memoirs were omitted: *"Too Much Is Not Enough" (Andrew Rannells) *"The Kid" (Dan Savage) *"Why Not Me?" (Mindy Kaling) *"I Feel Bad about My Neck" (Nora Ephron) *"Bossypants" (Tina Fey) *"The Girl with the Lower-Back Tattoo" (Amy Schumer) All of these deserve consideration, if you ask me. Food for thought. P.S. Not a celebrity memoir....but...Richard Russo's "Elsewhere" is also terrific.

Your boss is from another era. "I don't like science," he says, breezily. "I'm just not a science guy." He is an academic dean. Having recently seen an indie film, he has thoughts: "I just don't understand why those people use the N word with one another. Doesn't that seem offensive?" Consider white-splaining: Consider a speech in which you speculate about minority groups, and about how sometimes a word is "re-claimed." All of this seems unwise. Stay silent. You have a convenient fund of cowardice whenever people say something offensive. Just recently, the nanny you're hiring muttered something about "other cultures" and about how "some people" feel it's "acceptable" to keep the house temperature at "like, 900 degrees all the time." And did you say anything? You did not. Leave unstamped mail in a mailbox, accidentally. Nervously bend your metro card, so that it ceases to func...

Considering a move to New Jersey? Here are some aspects of the interstate commute that you can anticipate loathing: *The man (or woman, I actually don't see gender patterns here) who feels entitled, before 7 AM, to have a lengthy phone call on an otherwise-silent train car. This man (or woman) will almost certainly end the call by reaching for his (or her) headphones, which will be turned up too loud, so that you can hear just a fraction of, say, Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music," but not an appealing fraction, just, like, a small insect whine that doesn't end and doesn't end and doesn't end. *The man (this is usually a man) who feels entitled to interrupt the flow of foot traffic out of the train car at Hoboken, but who then does not extend the same courtesy to other passengers. *The poster advertising "the Felician Way": Felician is apparently a small college in New Jersey, and the poster features an older white man pontificatin...

*I very much want "The CONJURING Universe" to be a "thing," and I will happily shell out this weekend for "Annabelle Comes Home." Here are some things to know: *The very first "Conjuring" is an exalted film. It features Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga in a tour de force performance. But it also has screen legend Lili Taylor giving a monster-sized performance--grief, terror, hope, etc. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Big-budget movies generally will not give a person like Lili Taylor a chance to shine. There's one exception--and it's the horror genre. If you want to see Vera and Lili sinking their teeth into thick, bloody actor-meat--if you don't want them, say, in a hushed indie drama about how your aging, mildly-deranged parents seem to be your enemies but really they are not your enemies--then you need to turn to horror. *The "Conjuring" universe gives us a married couple who have devoted their lives to ...

"The Shrink Next Door" concerns a man, Marty, with boundary issues. Marty has just ended things with a girlfriend, and she wants reparations. Specifically, she wants a Mexico vacation once promised to her. Marty is so "at sea" that he believes he still owes this person a trip to Mexico. The Mexico discussion seems to be the "inciting event" -- the thing that gets Marty into therapy. But he hasn't just chosen any old therapist; he has chosen Ike, a charismatic licensed psychiatrist and con man who basically takes over his life. Ike seems to make Marty fire his own sister. (The sister is problematic in her own ways, inventing her own hours, using work time to chat on the phone, but the podcast doesn't fully get into that.) As a juvenile form of retaliation, the sister goes to Zurich and robs a bank--takes, from Marty, possessions that an ancestor had left behind. Here, Marty does something even more shocking: He severs relations with both his...

Disney's "Hercules" is coming to Central Park as a musical, and this is good news. "Hercules" is an underrated post-Ashman Disney movie. People in the know feel that it didn't quite get the reception it deserved. One thing I like about "Hercules" is how closely it follows the blueprint for the Great American Musical. A successful musical often starts with a tone-setting number, a toe-tapper that lets you know who the main people are, and what the setting is. Think of "Tradition," from "Fiddler," or "Little Shop of Horrors," from "Little Shop." "Hercules" gives us "The Gospel Truth." After this, you need an "I Want" moment--and "Hercules" has one of the best, "Go the Distance," where the title character vows to leave his hometown and discover his purpose for existing. A Broadway musical should have a conditional love song, where a main character swear...

Here's my to-do list. What's yours? *Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon * Anita Brookner, The Debut * Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280 * Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble *Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness, as Such *Lillian Ross, Picture *Kate Atkinson, Big Sky *Georges Simenon, Maigret's First Case *Becky Masterman, We Were Killers Once *Philip Roth, Everyman * Denise Mina, Conviction * Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent * Donna Leon, Beastly Things * Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderer * R.K. Narayan, The English Teacher * Alice Munro, Open Secrets * Brookner (again), Latecomers From P.D. James (by way of Henry James): "The purpose of a novel is to help the heart of man to know itself." Can't wait for the beach--and I'd love to hear what you plan on reading in the next few months!

The best cupcake in New York City is from Magnolia Bakery. In fact, the best Saturday imaginable involves a trip to Magnolia. The one on Bleecker. The one that Carrie Bradshaw made famous. You go and you get your cupcake. (Bleecker St. has become less crazed since the days of SATC, and if you pick an odd hour, say, 11 AM, you're not going to face insufferable lines at Magnolia. Who says you can't have a cupcake at 11 AM? I say you *can* ....) You get your morning cupcake, and you sit in the little park across the street with the chess tables. The cupcake should have a chocolate base, and then the frosting should be buttercream. What's special about Magnolia is that there really is no effort to pretend that the cake itself is important. The cake is, like, the width and depth of a dime. A Magnolia cupcake is merely a vehicle for the delivery of frosting--and I like that Magnolia doesn't "pretend." I tend to hate duplicitousness. Not only is Magnolia frosti...

Andy Cohen is right that the Assembly's failure to vote on the NYS surrogacy bill is a major slap in the face to the LGBTQ community--but it's also, for example, a slap in the face to heterosexual women who, because of illness, cannot conceive. It's hard not to feel cynical about the cowardice coming from Albany. Also: It's unpleasant to have strangers telling me whether I can or cannot attempt to have a child in the part of the world I live in. There's a great need for change. I look forward to seeing that change down the road!

I loved "Beauty and the Beast" in childhood. If you were a gay kid, you weren't going to see yourself reflected--in a straightforward, honest way--on-screen, in a Disney film. So you made do with what you could get. And what you could get was Howard Ashman. We all know Belle is a gay man in secret. She is sort of dreamy and odd, repressing her pain via fastidious hours and hours of reading, hoping for another life, perhaps in a big city. (At my first job, my boss blithely told my colleague, "Well, of course he's gay. He went to Yale. That's where all the gay boys go.") We can imagine young Belle burying the fact that she is an outcast--channeling her anger into obsessive days and weeks with lists of SAT words--hoping to reap her reward one day at Harvard, etc. This is the story of many gay boys. And yet: Watching "Beauty at the Beast" at Paper Mill several days ago, I found myself surprised. I was surprised by how irritating Belle is. Bel...

When I was a little girl at home, if one of us children upset a glass at table or dropped a knife, my father's voice bellowed: "Behave yourself!" If we soaked our bread in the gravy, he cried out, "Don't lick the plates! Don't make messes and slops!" Messes and slops were things which my father could not stand, any more than he could stand modern pictures. "You people don't know how to sit at table. You are not people one could take out anywhere. You make such a mess. If you were at a hotel table in England, they would send you out immediately." He had a very exalted opinion of England, holding it to be the finest example in the world of good breeding... This is a passage from Natalia Ginzburg's "Family Lexicon." Sometimes it's called a novel, sometimes a memoir. Ginzburg was a major Italian writer; she is now enjoying a renaissance (see today's NYT), and there's speculation that her current moment in the sp...

I think Sally Rooney is not yet thirty, and I'm exasperated that she is already as wise as she is. Some lingering thoughts from "Normal People": *Rooney understands--and many writers don't really get this--that a maker of fiction needs to raise questions. That's all. The storyteller's job isn't to answer questions, just to raise them. So, for example: Rooney's protagonist, a novelist and a Marxist, wonders what the real point of fiction-writing is. Is it really worthwhile to give someone (often a wealthy person) a brief imaginary emotional experience? Are there better things to do with one's energy? This question is raised, and then it haunts you. Period. *Rooney resists explanations and happy endings. We understand that there is substantial trauma in Marianne's family; we know people are unwell, despite all the money in this family. (And isn't that just like life? Money is nice, but it won't always protect you.) But we never really...

I'm excited to revisit "Deadwood" sometime soon; there's a strong related Terry Gross piece, with Milch and with Olyphant, on NPR. Some takeaways: *Milch describes the surprising boon that is censorship. When show handlers will not allow you to use certain words, you're forced to become more creative. Milch says it's *context* that suggests vulgarity. So you can actually be extremely vulgar using classroom words, and you can be less-than-vulgar using dirty, dirty words. As an example, Milch recalls *inventing* a word--and just the sentences he built around it made the word seem extraordinarily filthy. Brilliant. *Milch wasn't especially interested in Westerns, but he *was* interested in how a civilization is built. He was going to focus on ancient Rome, but I think others had arrived on that terrain first. So "Deadwood" became a way of exploring a theme; the setting didn't come first. *Olyphant won his role simply by staring silently at...

People who act as surrogates are mentally unstable and impoverished; they're all from one race, and it isn't white; they are weak and easily exploited. In addition to being false, this seems deeply condescending toward people who act as surrogates, but it's a position you'll see in reader comments in the NYTimes. There's frequent use of the adjective "poor," which seems like a misnomer and also seems inherently patronizing. * Adoption is easy, and gay people who don't adopt are unspeakably selfish. I'm stunned by the number of straight people who ask, in the NYT, "Why not just adopt?" How often is this question asked of straight people? * Gay people feel entitled to have children, absurdly. Nope. No one is "entitled" to have children. But if you can try, and you'd like to try, and you have people who want to help, and can help in a safe and compensated way--then why not try? * Gay people are crazed hedonists, just look...

I haven't watched the new Taylor Swift video yet (I know, it's shocking), but I do have a few observations about the words. Of course I do. *"You need to calm down" is a statement you would make in the presence of a child. It's like "This is why we can't have nice things" (another Taylor title). The implication is that Trump--surely, at least a part of Taylor's intended audience--is a child. *Famous Tay Tay quote: "A song is what you think as you're driving away. The thought you have as you study the rearview mirror." Taylor often saves these thoughts for former loves. Here, though, she is addressing someone who has made some hateful remarks. There's an effort to actually inhabit this person's perspective: "Damn, it's 7 AM," "Hey, are you OK," "You're making that sign....must have taken all night...." All of this suggests curiosity and empathy, and that's striking to me. *...

I have been a substitute teacher now for a year--it's something that gets tossed in with some general secretarial duties--and I've had several of my own sins visited upon me. The errors I made as a teacher? The cavalier way I treated subs? I see things differently now. Here is some advice, if you're ever called to sub, and the advice might travel the spectrum from philosophical to extremely specific: *Rely heavily on "The Magic Schoolbus." It's not a great show. The character development is thin. There's always a lengthy, tedious interlude with heavy exposition (and my eyes always glaze over). BUT: There is a hyperactive background score and there are many bright colors. It's amazing how much tedium you can tolerate if the music and color scheme are continuously shifting. Trust me on this. Also, you may have a Netflix account, but many SmartBoards have weird issues with "Silverlight" or some other tech-problem nonsense. And when you...

*The new episode of "Big Little Lies." I'm interested to see how Kidman manages Meryl, and how Witherspoon copes with the news that her daughter refuses to go to college.... *"Fleishman Is in Trouble" and "No Visible Bruises." These seem to be the books "of the moment." "No Visible Bruises"--or at least the press surrounding it--gives me the impression that we now have a companion piece to the first season of "Big Little Lies." *"Child's Play." Do you want a brilliant idea? Cast Aubrey Plaza in an update of the Chucky story. This could be terrible. But it seems audacious enough that it might work (maybe). You know I'll be at the theater. Happy viewing!

A while ago I wrote about Robyn's "Dancing on My Own," a song beloved by the world and a song I rank really, really high. I'm happy to report NPR just did a piece on this song, in its American Anthems series: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/10/730641583/robyn-dancing-on-my-own-alone-together-american-anthem Among the main points: *This is a strangely jaunty tune paired with a sad story. The clash between rhythm and words seems to capture something about Robyn's state of mind; she is in mourning, but she is also resolute; she is a mess, but she'll keep going. (It makes me think about "Walking on Broken Glass.") *Some gay listeners think, when Robyn sings, "I'm not the girl you're taking home," she is in fact saying, "I'm not the guy you're taking home." (And she DOES achieve something weird and ambiguous with that syllable.) All this calls to mind gay male cabaret performers who make use of Taylor Swift's ...

A ranking of Richard Yates's novels (because: why not?) ...... THE BEST: "The Easter Parade." Amazingly brisk and authoritative. Heartbreaking. Characters who seem "real." Startling twists. THE RUNNER-UP: "Revolutionary Road." I just think it could be a bit shorter. I do love the garrulous real estate agent and the painful office scenes. THE MIDDLE: "A Good School" (you feel like you know these people, and you care about them), "Cold Spring Harbor" (cringe-inducing in the best way). THE REST: "A Special Providence" (the Mom scenes are amazing, and yet the war scenes show Yates is *not* omnipotent), "Disturbing the Peace" (meh), and "Young Hearts Crying" (diverting, but maybe not the most urgent or important thing Yates has written). And there you have it. Happy Weekend!

Important Hollywood thoughts: *Mary Louise Streep became Meryl when her father realized that "Meryl" just seemed like a better fit. *Meryl's character in BIG LITTLE LIES is "Mary Louise"--which, as NPR notes, is simply a subtextual (or textual?) tribute to the greatness of Meryl. *Meryl, like Amy Schumer, was *not* an arty misfit in high school. (Many artists were.) Meryl was exceptionally popular--because, as she says, she studied how certain kids behaved and then "assumed a role." *Meryl begged for her part in SOPHIE'S CHOICE. She had to beg. *Meryl so loved the first season of BIG LITTLE LIES that she asked to be a part of Season Two--without having first seen any finished scripts. It seems clear to me that Meryl's interest is an outgrowth of her feminism: BIG LITTLE LIES is based on a novel by a woman, starring several women, spearheaded by female funders, in which the Bechdel Test is crushed, and crushed, and crushed again. Meryl...

Maurice Sendak's birthday is this week! He is dead, but it's still his birthday. A famous opening: The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him WILD THING! and Max said I'LL EAT YOU UP! so he was sent to bed without eating anything.... Smart because it gets right inside Max's head. It doesn't judge Max. Sometimes, you're having a small fit of creativity, and you don't consider all the consequences. And then you say something impulsive. Who hasn't been there? Form matches content. The rambling syntax matches the rhythms in Max's mind. Also, the refusal to explain *why* the wolf suit comes out and *why* the mischief ensues--that refusal of explanation seems to capture something about childhood, if you ask me. If you're a wound-up child, you're not considering cause and effect. Action is simply *happening* .... All that--captured in a sentence! A sentence in a kid's book. I'm ...

Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell. She's still wearing her school uniform, but she's taken off the sweater, so it's just the blouse and skirt, and she has no shoes on, only tights. Oh, hey, he says. Come on in. She turns and walks down the hall. He follows her, closing the door behind him. Down a few steps in the kitchen, his mother Lorraine is peeling off a pair of rubber gloves. Marianne hops onto the countertop and picks up an open jar of chocolate spread, in which she has left a teaspoon. Marianne was telling me you got your mock results today, Lorraine says. We got English back, he says. They come back separately. Do you want to head on? Lorraine folds the rubber gloves up neatly and replaces them below the sink. Then she starts unclipping her hair.... What to notice? *The first sentence has metaphorical weight. Marianne will always answer the door when Connell rings the bell. This is a (painful, awkward) love story that will span ...

She's back! Tonight! YOUNGER returns! Some Sutton trivia.... -This kid was on STAR SEARCH almost before she could walk. (I'm being hyperbolic.) -Upon anointing Sutton a new star, one reporter noted the "legs and lungs, the vulnerability and brass" of a major force on Broadway. -After MILLIE, there were the less-lustrous shows: YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, SHREK, LITTLE WOMEN. Sutton's more-recent choices make me wonder if she's now willing only to do revivals. -Sutton identifies herself as a "cock-eyed optimist" and credits her very young daughter with giving her (Sutton) a new lease on life. Thus: Sutton is now frequently singing, in public, Sondheim's hymn-to-discovery, "Take Me to the World." Love, love, love Sutton. Enjoy tonight!

Ask your shrink whether it's wise to bring "new life" to this planet. Global warming, coming apocalypse, dying polar bears, etc. Your shrink will startle you. "I DO think we're headed toward an apocalypse," he says, "but I believe there will be a few scrappy people who will persist. Who will construct something new." Really? And: wait a minute. Do you now--truly--possess an answer to your original question? *** Consider venting about a recent tense dinner party. Or about a dream in which your dog was mildly ill. Instead, your shrink has a new topic. He thinks we're all wandering around in a rage, with varying levels of consciousness. He thinks this is because, almost every second, another baby dies. And another! And another! Starvation! Your shrink thinks that American prisons should resemble Norwegian prisons; Norwegian prisons are about rehabilitation. American prisons are about vengeance and rage. Scratch your head. Maybe save th...

Lest we forget.... -Irons: "French Lieutenant's Woman" -Eastwood: She adored him in "Madison County," and modeled Miranda on him -Nicholson: "Heartburn" AND "Ironweed" -Washington: "Manchurian C" -Broadbent: "Iron Lady" -Martin: "It's Complicated" -Redford: "Out of Africa" -Kline: Sophie AND Mother Courage AND Ricki and the Flash -Grant: Opera Movie AND Mamma Mia -Hoffman: Kramer and she did NOT like him -Tucci: a fave (hence Prada AND Julie/Julia) -Hanks: The Post Attention must be paid!!!!

Do you hate your day job? Do the words "just checking" make you want to commit homicide? Or: "just reaching out" --? Or: "I am re-sending here the following information...." --? Or, perhaps: "There is no lesson plan but maybe you could cover and just do storytime..." --? I have a suggestion for you. The suggestion is Bonobos. Combat all of your anxiety, your depression, your rage, your helplessness at this small brick-and-mortar store on Court Street, in Brooklyn. Perhaps you will see Britain's Emily Mortimer, or even "Felicity"'s Keri Russell, as you shop. Drown your sense of existential helplessness, your questions about the possible futility of existence, in the contemplation of a seventy-dollar pair of swim trunks. Do you already own a pair of swim trunks? There's nothing wrong with having two. Particularly if one set has a fun festive striping pattern--a little gay, but not something that would make your frien...

I'm excited to catch up with Meryl Streep in "Big Little Lies" tonight! Let's consider her history of scene partners. Because: why not? *Renee Zellweger- "One True Thing" *Cher- "Silkwood" *Annette Bening- "Postcards from the Edge" *Viola Davis, Amy Adams- "Doubt" *Amy Adams- "Food Porn with Nora Ephron, Also Called JULIE AND JULIA" *Emily Blunt- "Into the Woods," "Devil Wears Prada," "Mary Poppins" *Julianne Moore, Allison Janney- "The Hours" *Audra McDonald- "Ricki and the Flash" *Olivia Colman- "The Iron Lady" *Zoe Kazan- "It's Complicated" *Christine Baranski- "Mamma Mia" *Emma Thompson- "Angels in America" The list goes on (and on and on and on)....Choose your own favorites today!

The highlight--maybe the one and only highlight--of last night's dull Tony Awards presentation was "I Cain't Say No." Three thoughts from the Sondheim Bible: (1) God is in the details. "Fer a while I ack refined and cool, a settin on the velveteen settee. Nen I think of thet ol' golden rule, and do for him what he would do fer me!" You sense Annie's wit and subversiveness: She is doing something with the "Golden Rule" that certainly doesn't match the intention behind her teacher's speech at Sunday school. (2) Let form match content. The lines I'm obsessed with: "Whatcha gonna do when a feller gets flirty an' starts to talk purty? Whatcha gonna do? S'pposin' that he says that your lips are like cherries, or roses, or berries. Whatcha gonna do? S'possin' that he says that yer sweeter than cream and he's gotta have cream or die? Whatcha gonna do when he talks that way? Spit in his eye?" Not...

Major Tony Award Moments: *"Ring of Keys" was a stand-out ("Fun Home") *The string of years in which Sutton Foster seemed to appear, and reappear, and reappear, role after role after role, and the shows weren't great, but it was refreshing to see Foster being radiant and committed to Broadway over and over again *Victoria Clark, first singing to a ship ("Sail on, sail on! Godspeed, Titanic!") and later representing "The Light in the Piazza" *Heather Headley spicing up "The Color Purple" *Kristin Chenoweth ferociously "selling" a moment from "Wicked" *Toni Colette demonstrating that she can do basically everything, as the central diva in "The Wild Party" We honor these ladies--tonight and every night! Happy Tony Awards 2019! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbSNIOYYWk

"Ask Again, Yes" is a new novel getting a great deal of attention. It's literary fiction, but it's among the top five bestsellers in the NYT right now. A rare achievement. The cover has some crowded suburban streets--house after house--but then the image is drenched in a bizarre blue-ish/green hue, so it feels like you're looking at something surreal. The blurbs are from heavy hitters--J. Courtney Sullivan, Louise Erdrich, Meg Wolitzer. There is one truly moronic comment, and keeping it to only one seems like an achievement. The moronic comment is something like this: "Mary Beth Keane combines Joan Didion's attention to detail with Alice McDermott's emotional wallop." Why is this moronic? Because it implies that Alice McDermott herself does not have a notable attention to detail. When in fact McDermott is one of the most eagle-eyed writers alive today; her attention to detail equals, if not surpasses, Joan Didion's attention to detail. Th...

Ms. Spencer likely won't get an Oscar nomination for "Ma"--it's hard to do for a horror movie, and particularly one released in the spring--but perhaps she should. In celebration of Spencer, some trivia: *Spencer is the only African-American woman to earn two Oscar nominations *after* already winning an Oscar. (Weirdly specific trivia.) *Spencer is tied with Viola Davis for African-American Woman with Greatest Number of Oscar Nominations. *Spencer's Oscar nods (I'm never sure if "nod" refers to recognition-without-necessarily-winning, but that's what I mean) came for "The Help" (won), "The Shape of Water," and "Hidden Figures." *Spencer won major recognition for "Fruitvale Station," as well. *"Being John Malkovich"--oddly enough--features a Spencer performance (helpful reminder!), and also please note that Spencer has dyslexia (just like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Ford, and Edward St. Auby...

Tony Awards 2019... Three Things to Anticipate: *Kelli O'Hara being sassy. *Noblezada belting. *Beth Leavel charming everyone (even with weak material). Fond Recent Memories: *Esparza slaughtering "Being Alive." (It was so intense that it generated a parody, "Being Intense." Good parodies only happen when the parodist is fond of the strong piece he is mocking.) *Alice Ripley struggling with the metronome in "Next to Normal" (but still breaking hearts). *Patti LuPone seeming to split atoms with "Everything's Coming Up Roses." Three Big Recent Upsets: *LaChanze crushes LuPone. *"Avenue Q" slaughters "Wicked." *"In the Heights" tramples on "Passing Strange." (Maybe not *really* an upset, but an injustice did occur.) Tune in Sunday night! This is crucial FOR THE WORLD!

*Sometimes, to work up the energy to run, you're tempted to have a popsicle. And, obviously, if you're going to do that, why run in the first place? *If you don't run, you can use the time to research online: "the Cheshire Home Invasion Murders." *Or: "5 Lesser-Known but Incredible Greek Islands." *Or: "Mollie Heckerling Counters Chris Kattan Sex Rumor." *Even if you go running, eventually, you will still have to die! Stay in. Stay in. Stay in!

I reach for subjects of possible interest: *Sugarfina. This is a new store that sells absurdly overpriced haute candy. Like, a trillion dollars for a small packet of gummy bears. Who doesn't want to talk about candy? The teen next to me rolls his eyes. "That store is ridiculous, and I would never go there." I consider the money I myself have just dropped on a Sugarfina purchase. I change the subject. *Katy Perry's new single. My teen says: "I have not listened to Katy Perry in like twelve years." So, on to Cardi B: "She's over. There are stories that she drugged and assaulted people." *Legalizing marijuana in NY. My teen: "It's uncool because the illegal drug market helps many dealers stay afloat. If we legalize marijuana, those dealers will go under, and we need to protect them." *Ted Bundy. Here's a subject where my teenager and I have common ground. "He was handsome, so he got away with stuff," says my fri...

*South Orange has *hills" ....Who needs *that*--? *You will never have the waistline of, say, Sandra Oh in "Killing Eve." People like that are paid, in part, to work out all day long. That's like a large part of their job. And that's not you. And so a logical conclusion is that you shouldn't bother to work out *at all* .... *What about your dog? Your dog is home alone. *What about the CrockPot? It's unattended. There's a clear answer here. Be home, on your couch, at all times!

I am regularly baffled by popular responses to Woody Allen. The thing that baffles me is certainty. I have no idea whether Mr. Allen molested Ms. Farrow's daughter. I do know that that's an allegation. I also know that it was found to be not provable, that Woody Allen denies the allegation, and that one member of the Farrow household--Moses--has an account of events that is not at all flattering to Mia. I think that's really all that anyone knows--unless the person in question is Woody himself, or Dylan. Given the facts, the frequent attacks on Allen in Vulture are baffling to me. What if these writers are wrong? One voice of sanity seems to be Cherry Jones, who has stated that she is unwilling to attack Allen, and observed that others are "more comfortable in their certainty" than she herself is. Ms. Jones is a lone wolf. A few other actors are outspoken in their total support of Woody Allen, going well beyond Jones's cautious statements: Those actors...

Coming soon: There's a book of essays by Emily Nussbaum, a Pulitzer-winning critic who writes about TV. Nussbaum is proudly iconoclastic--she wasn't wild about the buzzy show "Homecoming," for example--and she also smartly calls attention to shows by women. Famously, she defended "Sex and the City" from a critic who called it "just a trifle about pretty ladies in Manhattan." Nussbaum argued that SATC was a tricky, nuanced show with a provocative anti-heroine at its center. I don't often love books of essays, but I'll skim Nussbaum. For sure. Enjoy!

Just so you know, there's a list available of forty old-fashioned skills all kids should have: https://frugalfun4boys.com/40-old-fashioned-skills-for-kids-today/ I really love this list. I particularly love that it blends "hands-on" skills with "soft" skills. The hands-on skills: finding a book in a library, making scrambled eggs, checking tire pressure, planning a budget, ironing a shirt, caring for a pet. The softer skills: writing a thank you note, choosing an appropriate gift, playing with a baby, making conversation with an older person, shaking hands, giving others the benefit of the doubt, being kind, apologizing in a sincere way, introducing oneself. The list is for kids, yes, but it also seems to capture something universal about an *adult's* daily life. Aren't we all mostly running around making scrambled eggs and struggling to communicate? I have no idea how to iron a shirt or check tire pressure. For planning a budget: I just over...

*Sometimes, the act of running seems to stir up weird reflux issues, and then you're hacking for the rest of the day. *Whether or not you like your footwear, you actually have to *find* the footwear before departing, and the time spent searching is time you *could* spend Googling Katy Perry's biography, or checking online to see if there are any updates on the 1998 unsolved murder of Yale undergraduate Suzanne Jovin. (There aren't any updates.) *Sometimes, the sun is so bright. Ack! *There is a particularly thorny bush that sticks out and disrupts your walk down the path to the driveway, and if you move out of the way of the bush, you must stray onto the grass and risk squishy wet sneakers, and if you stay on the path, you might get punctured! And obviously clearing the bush would not be an option: That would require special tools and impossible expertise. The saga continues!

Like everyone else in the world, I'm obsessed with the new Katy Perry song, and, nerd that I am, I need to make three observations here: (1) This is a song about ambivalence. The speaker is pulled in two directions: Against her own best judgment, she will almost certainly contact her (possibly toxic) former lover. Why is it shrewd to write about ambivalence? Because the sensation of conflicting impulses is something we all experience all of the time. Perry's frenemy, Taylor Swift, High Priestess of Ambivalence ("You look like bad news; I gotta have you"), has already endorsed the new Perry song. (2) This is a song in which form matches content. Perry seems to mock herself, and to mock the idea of a racing, self-rationalizing mind, with this run-on sentence: "Just because it's over doesn't mean it's really over and if I think it over maybe you'll be coming over again...and I'll have to get over you all over again...." The chaos of Ms. ...

Many great mystery writers choose detectives who are exemplary human beings. Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti is almost relentlessly imperturbable; Reginald Wexford, in Rendell's series, rarely has an untidy inner life; Adam Dalgliesh, in the PD James novels, consistently has himself pulled together. What a treat, then, to contemplate the mess that is Carol Jordan. Ms. Jordan is Val McDermid's invention. She first appeared in 1995, in "The Mermaids Singing." She isn't even-tempered or fully reliable. She has a serious drinking problem; she is in love with an impotent man, just as damaged as she is; she regularly fails to say the politically sound thing during charged departmental meetings. She is dangling by a thread. I really love her. McDermid explores depravity a bit more thoroughly than Rendell, Leon, and James. How do you know you're in a McDermid story? A child is made to stand in excrement, in a toilet, for hours on end. A serial killer runs around m...

*There isn't big Dolly Parton news on the horizon. At least, not that I'm aware of. And I'm not a Dolly Parton expert. I guess one Dolly Parton topical thing to point out is: A major Parton interpreter, Stephanie J. Block (alumna of Broadway's "Nine to Five"), is about to win the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a musical. Block has Parton to thank--Parton, among others--for her career. *All that said, I want to observe something about Parton. I think her greatness comes from her awareness of ambivalence. I think there is unresolved tension in her big songs. For example, in "I Will Always Love You," there's an obvious conflict between the speaker's serene wishes ("joy and happiness") and the major heartbreak of the chorus. And, in "Jolene" (my favorite), the speaker feels any number of difficult things: helplessness, unease, self-doubt, irritation, panic. The problems don't go away. They're well-articulated...