Liars and Saints

 In the abstract, a hospital is like Oz, a well-run world unto itself, a place where great things, great acts of healing, can occur. But, if you live for a few weeks in a hospital, then you see the man behind the curtain. In my car, I have a thermos that says: "Gundersen Hospital, Keep Calm and Mom On." It doesn't matter that I'm not a mom, and moms are absent from my home. No one at Gundersen really wrestled with the idea of "alternative families," and the harried twentysomething who shoved the thermos at me must have thought: "Free shit. Of course they'll accept it." (This conclusion was accurate!) Toward the end of my stay, I was asked to watch a series of educational videos, so that I would not (a) shake my baby to death, (b) ignore signs of choking, or (c) drive my child around with her body unbuckled, dangling from the passenger-side window of the car. These videos were like bad pornography. An actor--without affect--would murmur, "O...

  Tipping my hat to Marcia Brown, a gay woman who was born not far from where I was born. Brown became the first person in history to win three Caldecott Medals. (To this day, only one other person has earned that distinction, David Wiesner.) My love for Marcia Brown has to do with her classic re-telling of "Cinderella." This is a tale without true monsters; the stepsisters can be awful, but they're not on par with Snow White's evil queen. (Brown makes them silly and pitiable, like eccentric aunts in a Jane Austen novel.) The most interesting thing about Cinderella is that she forgives, she shows mercy. After she marries, she invites the stepsisters to live with her in the royal palace, and she finds them positions within society. Kindness is "lending someone your strength"; Cinderella seems to have written the book on kindness. I'm moved by the Prince kneeling before the maiden, and by the stepsisters accepting a gift of peaches at the royal ball. Brown...

 On Thursdays, I can drop the kids with the nanny and take myself to a movie. The last two Thursdays, the movies have been so bad, I've eagerly awaited the inevitable phone call that has disrupted the story. "Escape Room II" didn't even attempt to include characters--the experience was like watching someone else play "Tetris" for two hours--so I was delighted when the officious washer/dryer repairman called. "You say it's the spin cycle at fault and it's really the heater? That's like saying  Repair the wheels of my car  when it's really the radio that is busted......" Last week, I chose "Black Widow." I had hoped to gouge out my eyes before viewing another Marvel film, but it's slim pickings here in Jersey. I briefly nodded off after four minutes, thus missing crucial exposition about alien Soviet drone/starlets, and then I was lost for the next two hours. This time, my call came from my husband, so I assumed my baby ...

  "Perversion of Justice" feels like a spiritual sequel to "Empire of Pain"; both books are big right now, and both are about powerful monsters pulling strings to remain out of the spotlight. "Perversion of Justice" is the weaker book because--as the Times has observed--Julie K. Brown doesn't really have a full story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein used wealthy contacts to get out of an appropriate punishment for his crimes; we know that one engineer of Epstein's scam, Acosta, later became labor secretary. (We know that Julie Brown's reporting then led to Acosta's resignation. "I'd like to step down because my involvement in a case many years ago is now unjustly stealing attention from President Trump's wonderful economic news.....") We don't know: what Trump did with Epstein. Or what Bill Clinton did with Epstein. Or what Alan Dershowitz did. We don't know exactly why Acosta behaved the way he behaved; we don't ...

  One issue I had with "Friday Night Lights" was that characters were always "popping in." If you needed to chat with Coach, you would just drive up to his front door. Seeking advice about a possible abortion? Surprise Tami Taylor in her kitchen, even though you've literally never been in this kitchen before. (Workplace dramas--"The Good Fight," "SVU"--do not need to invent reasons for characters to be in one room together. If you work with someone, you see that person constantly, perhaps more than you see your spouse.) One thing I admire in "The White Lotus" is that Mike White invents plausible reasons for plots to intersect (without using a workplace). I personally resist the temptation to speak to other hotel guests when I'm on a vacation, and yet I can believe that White's characters might fraternize at a bar, on a boat, by the pool. This week's wonderful Lacy/Daddario story has Daddario wondering if Lacy is just in ...

  "Cape Feare" is among the more famous "Simpsons" episodes. I had thought Kelsey Grammer won an Emmy for this half-hour, but I was wrong. Grammer did win for playing Sideshow Bob--but in a later season. A stranger comes to town. Bart begins receiving menacing letters, written in blood: "Die Bart Die," "I Will Kill You." (Homer admits to having written one of the letters; he is angry that his son has mocked him. Bart has tattooed "Wide Load" on Homer's butt cheeks.) When Bart realizes his real nemesis is Sideshow Bob, a homicidal maniac, the race is on. The humor comes from how un-subtle Bob is; for example, Bob drives through the streets of Springfield, shouting out the names of people he does *not* intend to kill, and Bart is conspicuously absent from the list. (Maybe we're mocking Scorsese here? One thing you think, when you watch Scorsese's "Cape Fear," is that Nick Nolte perhaps drags his heels a *bit* before ...

  Friday night in this house was EPIC. We watched "The Good Fight," but we had to pause the opening credit montage, because the exploding purses made our son upset. Then: get this twist. I had a thought that it might be fun to revisit the early-eighties Meryl Streep drama "Silkwood." We were so pumped! Another twist: "Silkwood"  is not available via streaming. Just when I thought the night couldn't get crazier, my spouse suggested "Mamma Mia." What happens in Maplewood stays in Maplewood..... We were hoping to leave the house at least once in the next 72 hours, but our various half-hearted drink-with-us texts had been rebuffed. We did manage to score a last-minute invite to the birthday party for a neighboring two-year-old. My husband said, "Clearly, we're not in the top tier of guests." And I shrugged. I'm not proud. On the screen, Meryl was wrapped in a forty-foot cape, and she was swanning around a yacht, singing, "M...

 Tomie dePaola dreamed up several worlds: the Calabria setting of the "Strega Nona" books, the nostalgic real-world realms of the "Tommy" stories, the Egyptian palaces of the "Bill and Pete" trilogy, the canine schoolyard that belongs, in part, to the "Barker" twins. In his spare time, dePaola sketched movie stars, saints, various pets. DePaola also invented "Helga's Dowry," a feminist adventure, in which a troll can't marry because her dowry won't suffice. The troll--Helga--tells her boyfriend to wait for her, then runs out and scares up her *own* wealth. She trades magic Troll Juice to nearby humans--for gold. She cuts down trees for a wealthy landowner, and she scores a profit. Meanwhile, Inge, a rival troll, tries to steal Helga's boyfriend. It seems she has succeeded: A marriage date is set. We think we're reading about Helga's race to *best* Inge....but there's a twist. Helga won't have a husband wh...

 Broadway is returning, and it's returning with a revival of COMPANY. This will likely be Patti LuPone's main shot at a third Tony Award. I don't think we'll be seeing a win for Katrina Lenk; I think CAROLINE, OR CHANGE has that category in the bag.  (But who knows?) This spring, the Wall Street Journal argued that it makes sense to see Sondheim as an extension of Updike and Joan Didion; this is more sensible than trying to understand Sondheim in the context of Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin. The characters in Sondheim's mature works don't find happily ever after; they begin messy and end messy. Chekhov said, "The task of a writer is not to solve the problem, but to state the problem correctly." This is what Sondheim did, over and over; he described the disaster that is human affairs. He had fun--for many decades. COMPANY shows off Sondheim's joyous attention to detail. Spouses put married life under the microscope, for a friend: "It's not t...

 It's always a treat to discover a new voice--anywhere--so today I'm tipping a hat to Meredith Scardino. She doesn't even have her own Wikipedia entry, and yet she is responsible for the show I keep hearing about, "Girls5eva." Granted, this show also has a Tina Fey imprint, and you can "hear" Fey in some of the lines. For example, Fey contributed to the song "Dream Girlfriend": "I'm your dream girlfriend....cuz my dad is dead. Tell me again why Quentin Tarantino is a genius....." That Tarantino sentence--a marvel of economy and a line with "bite"--seems to me to be Classic Tina Fey. Other moments do *not* have Fey's name attached to them. For example, the titular girls' group--a pop group we follow around throughout the first season--has a loopy signature song: We're gonna be famous 5eva... Cuz 4eva's too short.... Gonna be best friends 3-getha.... That's one more than 2-getha..... This is so wonderfu...

  I agree with the NYTimes. "Landslide," an account of the end of the Trump presidency, is really captivating. I have fond memories of "The Devil's Bargain" and "True Crimes and Misdemeanors," and "Landslide" feels a bit like Part III. This one begins with Trump's debate prep, and I guess it will take me through the insurrection to the present (I'm one-third through). A story is about great characters. This one has Rudy Giuliani wandering around the White House, driving people away because he farts too much. There is Trump's frenemy, Chris Christie, playing Biden in the debate prep: Christie turns on Trump at the last moment and says, "You have blood on your hands. So many Americans have died because of you. And you want to talk about Hunter? Let's take a look at your own family....." This attack made Trump furious, and then he seemed deranged in the actual debate. People don't really know if Christie was being a...

  As I've said before, there are many reasons to vilify Dubyah--but among these reasons is *not* his love of Eric Carle. When Dubyah named "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" as his favorite book, people all over the country sniffed--in judgment. But people are ridiculous. Dubyah was giving a sincere answer. And "Caterpillar" is a work of art. Carle was not an especially  memorable storyteller--with the exception of "Caterpillar"--but he did see the world in his own way, and he made exuberant pictures of natural phenomena. He made you aware--or re-made you aware--of the wonders of the natural world; he communicated joy through his attention to the curves on an exoskeleton or the colors of a bear's fur. Like Sondheim, Eric Carle had his own "signature." If you saw a Carle bear, you immediately knew it was a Carle bear (and not a Pinkney bear, and so on). My dream is to travel to the Eric Carle Museum, to see the works of other illustrators (plus...

 Yesterday was my first day with two children home and a spouse at work. This was like Whac-a-Mole. One baby would settle, then the other would burst into tears, and so on. A highlight was the strange Joshie psychodrama unfolding on the couch. Josh seemed mostly furious that he no longer had full-day one-on-one attention, but Josh is a fighter, and he wanted to learn to cope, so in his calmer moments, he would grab his Snoopy doll and mimic anything I was doing with Susie. At other times, Josh seemed to *become* Susie; he wanted to be in the fetal position, on my stomach, and though I probably shouldn't encourage this, well, I'm trying to resist "the tyranny of the shoulds" ..... We're reading: *Burkert, "The Nightingale." Weird and boring, with pretty pictures. *"Cop Town," by Karin Slaughter. This is not appropriate for infants, but I edit out the curse words and make the story new. *"Paddington." This remains perfect--start to fini...

 About Nipples If you're a gay man holding a baby, the baby will search for your nipple. He just doesn't know.  On Poop People get so nervous about a poop-filled diaper, they have to comment. The smell can be overwhelming, such that you would need to be dead not to notice, and still, the person next to you will feel the need to say, "I think there's a poop in that diaper." I always want to respond. I want to say: You know? I'm aware. This is not like spinach in my teeth. I am fully cognizant of the poop in the diaper. Unless you're planning to do the costume change--as a little gift? No? Then you may zip your lips. I don't say any of this. Picture Books Look to the women and to the gay men. The great women are: Trina Schart Hyman, Marcia Brown, and Nancy Burkert. Also: Nicole Rubel. The gay men are: Christian Robinson, Tomi dePaola, James Marshall, Arnold Lobel, and Harry Allard. Queens and kings!

  Paul Zelinsky won awards for "Rapunzel" and "Rumpelstiltskin," and he worked with Beverly Cleary on "Dear Mr. Henshaw" and "Strider." In yet another burst of creativity, he illustrated "Swamp Angel," which was a kind of response to "Paul Bunyan" and "Johnny Appleseed." ("Swamp Angel" is an American tall tale--but, at last, it's a tall tale with a female protagonist.) This would be enough for many artists, but, in yet another phase, Zelinsky *also* made the pop-up book that critics have called the greatest of all time. That's "The Wheels on the Bus." You might not think this song has a plot, but it does. The wheels go round and round, and all's well--but then the lyrics suggest that something has changed. The wipers go swish; the windows go up. Why? The clouds must have gathered; it's raining. It's this change in weather that fires Zelinsky's imagination. The portly driver...

  The Emmy nominations are out, and there are opportunities for head-scratching. People seem focused on "Girls5eva," and the sense of outrage is strong. (I haven't seen "Girls5eva," but I'd bet, from the title alone, that this is a series worthy of awards.) What I generally don't perceive is a sense of overwhelming love for "Law and Order: SVU" (totally snubbed). "SVU" is unusual because it's essentially a soap opera, and yet it once won a major Emmy Award (for Mariska Hargitay, Best Actress). Christopher Meloni also once received Emmy recognition--though just a nomination, not a win. Then you have the string of winning guest stars: Leslie Caron, Amanda Plummer, Ellen Burstyn, Cynthia Nixon, and so on.  But this past year didn't do anything for "SVU," in terms of Emmy nominations. I think the world of "SVU"--a particularly gritty reimagining of NYC, in which phantom versions of Brett Kavanaugh, Rae Trujillo...

  It's mid-July, when the brain turns to mush, like melted ice cream. If you're looking for a beach read, may I recommend "Winter Street," by Elin Hilderbrand? Everyone already loves Hilderbrand, and she was recently the subject of a glowing NYT profile. She writes soap operas set on the island of Nantucket. In "Winter Street," Kelley, a middle-aged innkeeper, walks in on his young wife while she is tonguing the local Santa Claus. How can Kelley stay afloat when his marriage is sailing off, far, far away, toward rocky shoals? Meanwhile, his daughter, Ava, can't free herself from the bewitching Nathaniel, even though we all know He's Just Not That Into Her. And a family connection, Patrick, uses insider info to invest in a drug that may combat leukemia--and when the feds come knocking, we begin to think we may soon be reading about a case of suicide. Yet elsewhere, in Afghanistan, Kelley's son Bart fights for his life. And Kelley's *first* wif...

  Three cheers for Mike White, who is just around fifty years old, and who has, under his belt, "Enlightened," "Brad's Status," "Year of the Dog," "Beatriz at Dinner," and several other major achievements. White was tapped by HBO to create "pandemic content," and he decided to ask several TV stars to quarantine with him on a Hawaiian island. It's a tribute to White's brains and charisma that stars tend to follow him from one project to another: Molly Shannon ("Enlightened," "Dog," "Lotus"), Connie Britton ("Beatriz," "Lotus"), Laura Dern ("Dog, Enlightened"), Luke Wilson ("Enlightened," "Brad's Status"). White essentially tells one story over and over: A needy, affluent, white person embarrasses herself in varied settings. Amy Jellicoe ruins a bridal shower when she feels a need to give an improvised speech about immigration. Brad, of "B...

 Joshie's first teacher has spent a bit too much time with two-year-olds. She has embraced the concept of parallel play. When you try to speak to her, she interrupts you by loudly barking a question that is unrelated to the thing you were talking about. I say, "Just to give you context about why we're looking for half-day--" And she says, "WHERE DO YOU LIVE??" She says, "This is really a Life Skills class I'm teaching. How to share, how to be a friend, how to listen to a story. It's a class for babies--but, also, many ADULTS could benefit from it!" She pauses for a laugh. Josh picks up a styrofoam peanut from the sensory science table. He puts it in his mouth. "Don't do that," I say. Josh stares at me, then calmly reinserts the peanut into his mouth. I'm wearing a Buffalo tee shirt, and as I try to describe my son's napping schedule, the teacher gets excited. "OH MY GOD, " she says. "Are you from Buffalo...

  Something made me furious this year. It was the announcement that approximately "ten percent" of people receiving the COVID vaccine would experience side effects. I'm all for the COVID vaccine. It has changed my life. I would urge everyone to get it. (A great thing, if you're a new parent, is that the trip to the COVID shot booth requires a lengthy solo drive, which means you can listen to the radio, e.g. an interview with Bill de Blasio about shady recycling practices, and no one will be crying in the back seat. This is like a tropical beach vacation.) But: only "ten percent" of cases involve side effects? Literally everyone I've talked to experienced side effects from the COVID vaccine. Everyone. The one exception I can think of is a Tweet from Stephen King's son, the horror novelist Joe Hill. (I don't know Joe Hill.) On Twitter, Joe Hill maintains that he felt nothing after the COVID vaccine. I write all this because I had an exasperating ex...

 The Times recently covered--at length--the fiftieth birthday of Joni Mitchell's "Blue." It's startling to see how this album is now one classic after another, after another, after another: "Little Green," "California," "Carey," "River," "My Old Man," and the list goes on. I'm a big fan of the first song, "All I Want," which is a note from a restless woman in her twenties, addressed to her lover/antagonist. It's a note, but its audience is (also) everyone in the world: I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling. Looking for something. What can it be? The young woman goes on to express exasperation toward her lover, and toward herself: I hate you some, I hate you some. I love you some. I love you when I forget about me. I want to talk to you, want to shampoo you, Want to renew you--again and again. Applause....applause....Life is our cause.... When I think of your kisses,...

The changes are coming fast. For weeks, I've been dripping Debrox in my ear--hoping to remove wax--and I had no idea Josh was watching. Yesterday, he picked up the sealed Debrox and held it to his ear, then--I swear--he smirked at me. Josh now has his own highly stylized dance, for "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." And he found a doll and began to eat its head, which seems to be a parody of my own behavior with Susannah? (Or an expression of brotherly ambivalence?) We're reading: *"The Wheels on the Bus," Zelinsky. Named the greatest pop-up book of all time. *Marcia Brown's "Cinderella." The gowns! The wigs! *Zelinksy's "Hansel and Gretel"--with its all-star villain, a witch in a house made of pancakes. Happy Reading.

The Barrett-Solomon Film Exchange continues. My husband's great gift to me over several months has been "Friday Night Lights," which I wouldn't have watched on my own. The show was originally marketed as a football story, but when producers noticed that their main audience was affluent women, the marketing changed. ("It's About Life.") However, this switch happened too late for me--so I had to discover the show later, via streaming. Everyone talks about the big innovation of "Friday Night Lights": It's a prestige drama about a basically functional family. Contrast this with "Mad Men," "The Sopranos," and "Breaking Bad," where members of families are sometimes literally, physically attacking one another, and there is always a case of The Other Woman. "Friday Night Lights" even winks at this prestige formula when it threatens to throw Tami Taylor into an adulterous situation with "Glen," the s...

"We get some entitled parents here," says the nurse. "We call it drive-thru NICU. We're like, Oh, would you want to meet your baby? The baby we've been raising for the past four weeks? And the parent says, Just stuff her in the back seat. I'll take a chocolate shake with that." My husband is encouraging the nurse; he likes these stories. On the other hand, I feel that, if you're bad-mouthing parent A to parent B, then you're surely also bad-mouthing parent B to parent C, and so on..... The babies have exotic names: Paislee, Moros, Savanna. There are fanciful pastel seahorses on the walls, and a photo gallery of notable NICU survivors (BORN AT TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS!); there is also ambient rage, beneath the midwestern pleasantness. You might share an elevator with two nurses; one might say, "Becky asked Kristin to give Paislee a sponge bath. I walk over five minutes later, I say, oh, did I hear Paislee needs a sponge bath? And Kristin is playing...

  "Hacks" is a bit like "Sunset Boulevard." An aging entertainment legend encounters trouble with the "relevance" issue. She winds up employing a younger writer to punch things up. In both "Boulevard" and "Hacks," sexual tension becomes a problem. "Boulevard" actually has Norma sleeping with Joe Gillis. In "Hacks," Ava merely has a sex dream about Deborah. (When she confesses this to Deborah's personal blackjack dealer, the dealer shrugs. "Of course you had a sex dream. Deborah is hot.") Unlike "Sunset Boulevard," "Hacks" becomes a portrait of a semi-functional friendship. The two hacks help each other; Deborah turns Ava's family event into a graceful affair, and Ava gives Deborah confidence to try new material. The two friends also learn from each other. Deborah learns to be a bit less tolerant of toxic men. Ava learns to recognize her own sense of entitlement--and sometimes, sh...

 The world of Bosch is a world of weirdos. That's what keeps you turning pages. "The Overlook" introduces us to Don Hadley ("Done Badly") -- who invents a terrorist scheme where there isn't one, then fails to admit he has murdered an innocent civilian. We get a homeless drifter who finds Madonna's Hollywood Hills autograph and tries to stalk her. ("I wanted an autograph, for my mom.") When confronted by the police, the drifter asks, "Why does America sell Maps to the Stars, if stalking is illegal?" Bosch has a quick reply: "Why do we have parking lots next to bars, if you can't drink and drive?" My favorite weirdo is Bosch himself, who seems to make twenty secret calculations before every possible work interaction, and who won't lose sleep over having been exposed to life-threatening cesium. At the end of this book, Bosch shrugs and says, "Some people speculate that a little accidental radiation might ADD years ...

  A few weeks ago, we in America observed National Best Friends Day--and, in this house, I'm getting ready for Salvy's fifth birthday. Like Jimmy Stewart, I tend to sleep next to my dog. But Salvy has been exiled for a few days. There is a new bedroom in the house, and sheets of glass are not yet ready for the staircase, so I've asked Salvy to remain on a different floor. I didn't want him accidentally throwing himself down the stairs, like Kristin Johnson in "Sex and the City." (This actually became a nightmare for me.) Salvy has handled his exile with grace, and he is also doing fine with a new car position. He can't be in the backseat anymore, because a tiny infant has occupied his spot. On rare occasions, Salvy will lose his sense of equanimity, and he'll dig a soiled diaper out of a garbage can. He will then shred the diaper and leave it all over the floor--and I think, this way, he is communicating with me. He is saying: "I'm generally f...

 Several journeys occur in the final season of "Bosch." One of my favorites involves Grace Billets. Grace, a smart, hard-working cop, becomes impatient during a meeting. She dresses down an underling. In the world of "Bosch," even one intemperate remark can be disastrous. And so the underling begins a bullying campaign; he writes "DYKE SLUT" on Grace's car, but he writes it with white shoe polish, so Grace can conclude that she is examining the work of a cop. The underling then harasses Grace's girlfriend with a B.S. traffic stop. (The writers point out that cops are only human; in another scene, a cop who clearly *is* guilty of DWI.....gets waved away....no problem....) In "Bosch," the moment you know your boss wants your blood spilled is the moment he says: "We take your complaint very, very seriously." The boss stages a kind of theft--it's like when Joseph deliberately makes his brother, Benjamin, seem guilty of pocketing...