Liars and Saints

 Are you interested in the new Lapine book and certain you'll never read it? I've tried to assemble the juiciest bits here. Who was the patron saint of "Sunday in the Park with George"? Easy. It was Bernadette Peters. No one has anything cross to say about Bernadette. She seems to have been a Textbook Definition of Professional Conduct, start to finish. Mandy was besotted. Critics were besotted. When the show won the Pulitzer, Bernadette turned up at the stage door to kiss James Lapine (even though Bernadette had left the production by this point). Who was the biggest diva? Mandy Patinkin. The Times mentions that Patinkin was so insufferable, stagehands wanted to drop a bag of sand on his head. Noted, but how about this? Patinkin claims that "Lesson No. 8" is a stunning achievement, more stunning than "Finishing the Hat." Who believes this? Only Mandy Patinkin. Irritating. What do we learn about Sondheim? SS smokes pot. He wanted to leave the theat...

  My husband and I have sensed a hole in our lives since “Mare of Easttown” ended, so we recently dug up “The Night Of.” I had resisted this series for a long while. I think the awkwardness of the title bugged me. And the fact that the three leads are all men. But I’m hooked. “The Night Of” concerns a party. A Muslim kid wants to attend, but he can’t get a ride, so he steals his dad’s cab. This theft becomes crucial: A pretty young woman believes our star is a cab driver, and hops in. Our star--Naz--should correct the record here, but he is young, and soon enough he is in an apartment on the Upper West Side, having semi-anonymous sex. The next morning, his friend/consort won’t wake up. Blood drips from the sheets. Naz runs away. At this point, a conventional series would focus on the hunt for the real killer, but that’s not really what HBO does. Naz gets thrown in jail, and we begin to study two communities: prison, and the world surrounding the court. (Order, and law.) In prison, ...

  There's quite a bit happening; my infant sometimes cries without apparent end, until she poops on my knee.  We have "cicada killers" swarming in the backyard; these are owl-sized wasps, and their name is alarming. (That said, the wasps kill *only* cicadas; the wasps are not *killers* who are *also* cicadas, as the words might suggest.) The contractor, who had once been dedicated to finishing a week before Memorial Day, just recently pushed his deadline to Monday, August 23rd, and then the 23rd somehow became the 25th.... And of course "The White Lotus" has ended. We're all doing the best we can. My beach books (for a Jersey-shore trip) will be: "The Last Thing He Told Me" (Laura Dave) "Another Marvelous Thing" (Laurie Colwin) "End in Tears" (Ruth Rendell) "Dead Beat" (Val McDermid) "Redhead by the Side of the Road" (Anne Tyler) "The Shadow in the North" (Pullman) Till next time!

 I have a friend who shares my love of picture books, and we sometimes talk about the gap between the competent and the inspired. Tomi Ungerer is Exhibit A among "The Inspired"; he was anointed, by Maurice Sendak, as a "spectacular graphic genius," and his Three Robbers, his Rufus, his Crictor .....all haunt many readers to this day. In "Snail, Where Are You?" Ungerer has a simple idea. He finds the coil of a snail shell in many surprising spots, among natural and man-made things. He, Ungerer, asks the reader to locate the snail in several images. This would simply be cute, but then there are also the special touches. The title--"WHERE ARE YOU?"--emerges as a song from a large tuba, which is itself "a snail." (A tuba coils like a snail.) The snails announce themselves in witty ways. One is the little curl in a foamy crest: "I'm riding the waves." One is the endpoint of a silly jester's cap: "I'm tops." St...

  "Into the Woods" was not especially well-received, in the papers, back in the eighties.  But this doesn't matter. The show is among Sondheim's most-loved works, spawning revival after revival; the other SS show that gets frequent revivals is "Sweeney Todd" (similarly divisive among critics, back in the 1970s). SS thinks these shows keep recruiting fans because they are plot-heavy; SS has noticed that people like plot. (Observe that SS isn't actually *endorsing* any popular opinions, here.) "Into the Woods" happened because James Lapine had a small child, or children, and he was spending quite a bit of time with fairy tales. Wouldn't it be fun to adapt a fairy tale? But Lapine quickly noticed that these tales have bizarre shifts and abrupt endings; they aren't always "rich in character." So, to fill out an evening, it would be necessary to throw several tales up onto the stage, and the tales would need to weave through, and c...

 For the first time in a long while, I have a movie theater within walking distance of my home. "The Village" cinema has opened in South Orange--mostly because Hollywood's Patrick Wilson wanted a functioning South Orange theater. Patrick Wilson lives (at least sometimes) in Montclair. He filmed a little promo for "The Village," and in the promo, he maintains that it's a trial to watch a movie at home: "The screen is so small, and you don't have any variety with your snacks." This puzzled me. Who has a small screen now? And does anyone actually go to a freestanding movie theater for the snacks? ("I'm really craving a fifteen-dollar sleeve of M and Ms.....") In any case, I saw "Don't Breathe 2," which is a bit like a fairy tale. A little girl finds herself in the custody of a deranged vet; the little girl's parents are (allegedly) dead. But then a sinister figure appears. He wants to abduct the girl. Why? Of course...

 Alice McDermott could be the greatest living storyteller in America, though she doesn't take on the flashy subjects (Marilyn Monroe, Dahmer, Chappaquiddick) that seem to speak to Joyce Carol Oates. McDermott's career is legendary. The second novel was a Pulitzer finalist; the third was a Pulitzer finalist. The fourth won the National Book Award, beating Tom Wolfe's buzzy "A Man in Full." Another Pulitzer finalist followed. A late-career novel almost won a (second) National Book Award. The most recent novel won the Prix Femina etranger. McDermott doesn't feel optimistic about literary fiction. She seems to think that novel-writing will become an example of "traditional folk art," like bagpipe-playing. She sees serial killers taking over all fictional terrain; she sees fiction writers relying strictly on sight and sound, as if already envisioning future movie scripts. Well? You might as well be the greatest bagpipe-player you can be, if you have that ...

 On Monday, we will bid farewell to our contractor, who has been a force of nature, and a force of change in our lives. Drifting off to sleep, recently, my husband said, "What will we talk about when the contractor leaves?" And it's a question I had pondered, too. A note about non-fiction. No one wants to read an un-funny litany of complaints. The impact of that sort of piece is to make the reader side with the alleged villain. (When a neighbor of Sylvia Plath's wrote a long rant about Plath, critics said, "Plath sounds fine. It's the writer who sounds like a turd.") My contractor--let's call him E--has certain charming moments of insanity. He actually has a crazed look in his eye, at all times. When he needed access to an obscure window in our house, he slapped a thin, rickety plank to the exterior wall, high in the air, then hovered uneasily on that plank. Weeks later, we asked E to move the ladder that was sitting uselessly under the plank, and E ...

 Some critics say "The Simpsons" had its last great run in Season Fifteen, and these critics point to "The President Wore Pearls." I was only half-awake for this episode, last night, and a baby was screaming on my stomach, but I gathered the script involves Lisa running for Student Council President. Amazingly, Lisa wins, but she soon becomes a prop for Principal Skinner. This principal tries to persuade Lisa to sign off on anything, blindly, including a dastardly "cut gym, arts, and music" agenda. The writers just slightly tweak a few "Evita" melodies to make the show a musical, and the result is delightful. The highpoint is "I Am Their Queen," a spoof on "Rainbow High" (in which Argentinian stylists reimagine Eva's image, to prepare for a tour of Europe). Lisa needs a new look to appeal to the grade-five set. At first, Lisa resists the stylists. "I need to be heard, not seen...." "Just Osh B'Gosh me......

  A favorite character of mine, right now, is the fictional actor Sam Fox, played by Pamela Adlon, on "Better Things." Adlon almost won the Emmy--twice--for this role. The show itself recently ranked among the top comedies of this current century, according to the NYTimes. Sam Fox has a crazy British mother--one of the lost souls from "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"--and she has three needy daughters. The father is basically not around. In one of the show's great scenes, the father pops up to say he will be taking a job in the neighborhood, for the summer, a very high-profile job. Fox reasonably believes the guy is making this announcement because he wants to request more time to spend with the kids. The guy clears his throat. Actually, this request is *not* the purpose of the dinner. The guy doesn't want to spend *any* time with the kids, and he fears bumping into them while on the job, and he just wants his ex to invent a diplomatic way to tell the kids t...

 A toddler bath inspires you to begin speaking a language you hadn't realized you're fluent in: "Is this an eety beety piggie? All cleans! We is all cleans today!!!" You dry the kid, and if the kid is anything like mine, he throws himself out onto the back porch, wearing only a diaper. You chase him with additional clothing--and nothing on his face suggests he is aware that he's deviating from "standard procedure." He remains clean for one to two minutes. Then: the feet are encased in mud, and the hands are coated in peanut butter. Retreat; you're defeated. Address the dirty bathwater, the tossed-off towel, the puddles on the floor..... We're reading: *"The Knight and the Dragon." (Tomie dePaola) *"Pajama Time." (Boynton) *"Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." Good day!

 I don't have a neat and tidy essay on "White Lotus," but here are a few thoughts (with spoilers); we watched the finale last night. *I was nowhere near to predicting the ending. A model I kept using was "Beatriz at Dinner"; the obtuse, powerful man remains obtuse, and the oppressed person ends up dead. This is *also* what happens in "Lotus" (but not even in the same universe as the events I half-imagined).  One thing Mike White does really well is: building and building on the antagonism between two characters, so that a violent rupture begins to seem inevitable. This is how "Beatriz" worked--and it turns out to be how "Lotus" works, as well. *Jake Lacy talks about how the show centers on transactions; the show repeatedly highlights how money can taint a relationship.  It's fascinating to see Belinda change as she begins to envision the business in her future; you see a hint of calculation behind her eyes, and she offers a busi...

  Stephen Sondheim wrote a "political trilogy" with John Weidman--"Pacific Overtures," "Assassins," and "Bounce." The one people really care about is "Assassins," and it's returning to Off-Broadway soon. Long before this country's recent insurrection, Sondheim was thinking about domestic terrorism, white supremacy, the wealth gap. Why not make a musical out of all that?  Sometimes, Sondheim's writing in this show makes me cringe. "Damn you, Lincoln: You threw the U out of the USA." This seems unworthy of the master. "Angry men don't write the rules, and guns don't right the wrongs." Not Steve's subtlest moment. Still, I like Sondheim's idea that lunacy is a problem America will never fully address; the violence will bubble up, the "official narrative" will reassert itself, and then the violence will return again. In this version of American history, John Wilkes Booth commits the ...

 My child's first school experience is about to begin, and I feel a bit like the character "Louie." I know Louis CK is a monster, etc., but as the NYT observed this summer, the show "Louie" remains a major achievement. It's something I think about on an almost daily basis (especially because my husband and I are watching Pamela Adlon's great video-memoir, "Better Things," which shares DNA with the Greenwich Village Comedy Cellar). In one of my favorite "Louie" moments, the protagonist attends a PA meeting. The parents are upset because the children seem mysteriously sleepy after lunch. Solutions are proposed. More outdoor-recess time! Stimulating new math lessons! Gluten-free dining options! Louie tentatively asks: "Aren't the kids seemingly sleepy because.....school sucks?" There's silence. "I mean....We all remember that, right? School sucks?" I thought of this as I read Joshua's long (quite long!) li...

 My husband is fond of The Maplewood Moms, and I'm also learning to love the group. It's a Facebook gang of Maplewood parents. You don't have to be a mom; you can be a dad. You can signal your progressive thoughts on gender by writing "mom*" .....The asterisk means you're winking at your audience. The Maplewood Moms page is an opportunity for piety, and the piety doesn't take much effort. Give yourself four to six seconds, and you can type "STOP AAPI HATE," and you can alter the font so it's very bright. This might lead to forty or fifty self-congratulatory replies: "THIS. THIS is why I love Maplewood." On quieter days, the moms may ask for a recommendation for a really great pedicurist, a fun resort in Costa Rica, or a cognitive-behavioral therapist for a ten-year-old with mild signs of possible anxiety. I have found my child's speech therapist through the "Moms," and I also found a doctor recommendation, because my c...

  A favorite character of mine is Puss in Boots. This cat belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, who basically has nothing else to go with his name. Some might feel despair, but Puss in Boots uses his brain. He begins catching rabbits and presenting them to the King, and he claims the rabbits are gifts from the Marquis. Then the cat's ambitions grow. You can't get anywhere without a good suit. Puss has the Marquis take a few laps in a nearby pond. Then he, Puss, assails the King: "My lord has gone swimming, and someone has stolen his fabulous clothing!" The King--recalling the rabbit-gifts--provides the Marquis with a new set of duds. It's these duds that allow the Marquis to feel emboldened; soon, the Marquis is speaking casually with a Princess. Meanwhile, Puss runs off to  a nearby palace, discovers the owner is a shape-shifting ogre, tricks the ogre into becoming a mouse, and eats the mouse. Now, the Marquis has a home for his Princess, and for himself. This is a ...

  The worst book of the summer is Megan Abbott's "The Turnout." I've been a Megan Abbott fan for a long while. Abbott takes unusual settings and makes them into noir nightmares. For example, one thriller concerned a squad of cheerleaders. Another involved a girls' gymnastics team. Still another involved a case of mass psychogenic illness among teen girls--inspired by an actual 2012 case in LeRoy, New York. The new book, "The Turnout," concerns ballet. All the little girls in Dara's studio want to be Clara in "The Nutcracker." When several girls lose the chance, inevitably, they put razor blades in the winner's ballet flats. They slip laxatives into the winner's lunch. Meanwhile, all is not well within management. The two teachers are sisters, and it's heavily implied that they have an incestuous past, and then one begins banging the loathsome new contractor. (I have experience with loathsome contractors, so I appreciated this pa...

 I woke up thinking about "The White Lotus," and about a few great speeches. Jennifer Coolidge worries that her new boyfriend will reject her once he reaches "the innermost layer." She says, "There are the polite layers, and layers under layers, but at my base I'm just an alcoholic mess. That's the core of the onion. And why can't we just go there right away?" Later, on a date, Coolidge bursts into tears, thrusts her mother's ashes at her man, and shouts, "I'M CRAZY! GO!!! FLEE THE CORE OF THE ONION!" And her date has the most romantic line in the series: "You're not that crazy. I still want to fuck you." I also loved Molly Shannon--series MVP?--taking on the idea of the trophy wife. "It's not so bad to be a trophy. Trophies shine. They glow. They give the owner joy and pride...." Steve Zahn: "Is it wrong to assault you, and steal your land, and make you dance a little dance at dinnertime? Sure...

  At least one critic has turned to Season Eight for "the best" episode of "The Simpsons": The contender is "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer." In this one, Marge tries to fill the house with cigar smoke, so Homer doesn't realize the annual chili festival is happening. Homer tends to get drunk on beer, and he then embarrasses himself in front of the community. After a fight, Homer promises he will *not* drink at the new chili festival. But certain peppers are so hot, they call out for an alcoholic chaser. Marge sees Homer with a beer and storms off. Homer, now upset and unhinged, channels his anger into a hot-chili contest. He coats the inside of his own throat with liquid candle wax so he can ingest certain extra-hot peppers. And the peppers send him on a hallucinatory journey. It's during this journey that Johnny Cash--in the form of a talking coyote--really questions Homer's life choices. Can Marge be an adequate soulmate? A person who d...

 In this house, certain rituals must occur before bedtime: *My husband and I stare at the ceiling and express impotent fury at our (absent) contractor, who is now three months off-schedule, and who disappears for days on end. We quote him: "I'll keep you apprised." "I'm in a meeting." "As per our discussion...." *We then mock the friend who recently found it exhausting to empathize, and who instead launched into an unsolicited monologue about home repair: "What you have to understand about contractors is that....." *My husband asks me about popular culture, and I try to answer in a way that is respectful but firm. "As a gay man, you really, really must know a few things about Edie Falco...." *We discuss our various pills. TUMS if the most recent meal was BBQ. Klonopin if sleep seems evasive. XYZal because it keeps one's allergies at bay--and also it's maybe extra Klonopin in disguise? It's these events I think I'...

  It's Friday. Here is everything you need to know about Meryl Streep. *When, in youth, Streep saw what Juilliard would charge just for the privilege to apply, she wrote a sharply-worded letter and turned her attention to Yale. *One of Streep's major press errors was to choose a certain tee shirt for a "Suffragette" photo shoot: "I'd rather be a rebel than a slave." This hasn't aged well. *On the set of "Adaptation," Streep approached Chris Cooper and said, "Stop whining so much." Around this time, an affectionate colleague on another set referred to Streep as "oddly bossy." The colleague was Julianne Moore. *Streep is grateful to Jane Fonda for help on the set of "Julia." Jane kindly said, "Meryl, notice the X on the floor. If you stand on that X, you will be in the light, and in the movie." *After "Silkwood," Meryl and Cher drifted apart. Meryl blames Cher. But it seems that Cher didn'...

  Maplewood is abuzz with drama. I feel for our little town; it seems we'll never have Manhattan-sized issues. Madonna will never use her cell phone during a Maplewood performance of "Hamilton." Our town mayor will never have high-profile fights with Andrew Cuomo about our public schools. This is why any moment of civic tension feels like a holiday; you can almost sense the suburbanites drooling with delight. Right now, we have three big issues: *Some (white) people have announced that the free public concerts, on Friday nights, are "too loud." This has led to a Twitter storm; other people are calling the band of whiners "a bunch of entitled Karens." The discussion has been constructive and edifying for everyone. *The public pool released something into the pool-water, and then people said they were going to the ICU, dealing with blue lips, struggling to hold on to life. The pool claimed the release was "just sediment." All of this has echoes...

  I've never seen "Caroline, or Change," but I like the deep weirdness of the story.  A gay white kid in New Orleans, mid-century, has a habit of leaving change in his pocket. His stepmother wants to punish him; she tells the maid, "You keep any change you find in that pocket of Noah's." This is, of course, uncomfortable for the maid, Caroline; basically, her employer is asking her to steal from a small child. But how do you say no to your employer? Tony Kushner can do anything he wants, and he counts Maurice Sendak among his friends, so, in "Caroline," we encounter a singing bus, a singing moon, a talking Confederate statue. The story feels a bit like "Gypsy"; Caroline is caught in entrenched behaviors, but her daughter, rebellious Emmie, sees a way forward. Emmie is the "Change" that Kushner alludes to in the title of his work (among other types of "change"). "Caroline," and its upcoming revival, are a spec...

  "Hitchcock" is my platonic ideal of a movie. A big, meaty role for Helen Mirren. A chance for Anthony Hopkins to be funny. An effort to recreate Golden Days in Hollywood history. Gorgeous shots of the California coastline. Screen time for Toni Collette, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Danny Huston, Jessica Biel. Delightful trivia. For example: The candy corn in "Psycho" came from Anthony Perkins. The actor Perkins liked having candy around. And Hitchcock had to fight the censors to include a shot of a toilet; this part of a restroom had never been seen on screen before. Hitchcock drafted a manifesto for screening- room operators: "How to Show PSYCHO." ("Do not allow late admissions. No private screenings for critics. Stars will not make the rounds for interviews....") But the reason I really like this film is that it's a marriage story. Helen Mirren has grown tired of Hitchcock--his selfishness and ego. Mirren acts out; she begins an...

 My son has entered the terrible twos. The shrieking and tantrums are "a thing," now. Bedtime is difficult. There can be rending of garments; sometimes, Josh tries to swat at my face. (I know, if I were a blue-ribbon Anne Lamott-level parent, I would firmly and clearly explain to Josh why swatting is not OK, but maybe that can wait a bit.) A good thing has grown out of the drama. I did some Google reading about this particular phase of "sleep conflict." And Google said: Don't just coo or hand over a teddy bear. Whether or not your child can fully understand: Explain that you're just around the corner, and you'll keep checking in every five minutes until he sleeps. Then, actually, stick to that five-minute schedule. Oddly enough, this seems to work. My great hope is that, eventually, Josh will walk around school, or a workplace, with a calm voice in his head--a product of many, many hours of (his parents') therapy--and the voice will say, "You...