Liars and Saints

We were too damn tired to spend a great deal of time on the pumpkins this year. But here they are. Next year, I hope to take notes from Gris Grimly and the book "Ten Spooky Pumpkins"; specifically, I hope to make a pumpkin with circular (not triangular) eyes. A little treat after pumpkin-carving was the first episode of Alan Cumming's "Instinct"; the script was really awful and sometimes incomprehensible, and Cumming seemed to know this, and he was always just walking the line between Serious Performance and Total Campiness. Delightful. For example, watch how Cumming seems to address the camera, directly, when he tells Whoopi Goldberg: "There might be poison in your champagne!" Small pleasures....

 Nicole Holofcener has always been a hero of mine. "Please Give," "Lovely and Amazing," "Walking and Talking," "Enough Said," "Land of Steady Habits,"  "Can You Ever Forgive Me" -- This is one stone-cold masterpiece after another. Not a dud in the bunch. Apparently, Holofcener has struck gold once again with "The Last Duel" (though I haven't watched yet). This week, Marc and I viewed "the *flawed* Holofcener project" -- "Friends with Money," from around fifteen years ago. This one has Jennifer Aniston dropping out of her private-school teaching life to become a maid. Aniston's character struggles with self-esteem. When a client proposes an unreasonably low fee, Aniston simply chews her lip and says, "OK." Elsewhere, Frances McDormand is a deeply embittered clothing designer who has married a man who may (or may not) be gay.  And Catherine Keener has found herself entangled with a...

 For a while, in this family, we have been writing about marriage equality. A dream is to have some kind of young-adult book in the world, but I don't control the market, so I try not to think in those terms. Instead, I try to think about just writing down stories for my own two kids. It's challenging to write for a middle-school world! Unless you are Michelle Obama or Trevor Noah. If you're MO or TN, the interest is already there--and you just need to recall your memories of childhood. Each of those memories has a tantalizing, implicit message: All this happened, and I still became Michelle Obama. Writing for kids, I'm surprised to find myself empathizing with certain intransigent lawmakers. In Massachusetts, before marriage equality became the law of the land, many centrist or faux-centrist lawmakers saw their job security in peril. If I vote to authorize marriage equality, then my conservative constituents may kick me out of my job . To know this, and nevertheless to...

In its third season, "Better Things" features a journey. Pamela Adlon is free of Louis CK, and Sam is sort of free of her oldest daughter, Max. The Max-starts-college transition was typically brutal. Max had demands for the graduation party: one keg, Absentee Dad would get a special role, Mom would not show her face.  Sam--Mom--signed the paperwork, but then she hid with her own mother (Phil) across the street, just to watch the party. Phil (the outstanding Celia Imrie) stared at Max and whispered, "That kid will be pregnant within the next few weeks." And this was how Max's "California phase" drew to a close. The show's brilliance is in tiny moments--noticing things many writers fail to notice. When Sam's antagonist, her ex-husband, betrays the kids in a particularly awful way, he quickly reframes himself as a victim: "Sam, you're judging me. I can hear you judging me. But you know what? People do what they need to do. And maybe you d...

  I admire Gris Grimly’s “Ten Spooky Pumpkins” because it’s a genuinely eerie picture book; it doesn’t try to sanitize various creatures of Halloween. The story involves a little girl in a harlequin costume, enjoying the critters in her corn field. You have goblins, bats, cats, pumpkins, wolves “charging o’er the moor,” skeletons, scarecrows, witches. At the climax, all the critters find one another, for a dance party. The moon--irritated by the noise--blows a great gust of wind and sends all beings back to bed; “the gate whined CREEEAAAK, and we all were fast asleep.” There is so much loving attention to detail. Each pumpkin seems alive. A water tower appears to be a monster in disguise. The moon seems to have wandered in from a Tim Burton set. I will keep an eye on Gris Grimly.

  I know I'm a crabby old man because I recently tried to use the New York City subway.   Idina Menzel really likes New York City. She likes it so much, she just recorded a version of Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind." But maybe it's easy to enjoy Manhattan if you're Idina Menzel, and you have two trillion dollars.   I have always hated the subway, but a return Sunday visit reminded me just how strong my aversion is. Lengthy waits, bizarre reroutings, unintelligible (still unintelligible!) announcements over the intercom. Dipshits with face masks dangling off their necks, and the one asshole who feels entitled to blast his music all through the train car.   I feel so old, I'm already dreading the "show your iPhone" moment when I return in a few weeks--to a Broadway theater. The iPhone ticket is apparently convenient--but convenient for whom? And why am I paying a "service fee" when I am the one downloading an app, linking an email t...

 OK, stop reading here if you aren't an SVU addict. This week's episode--poetically entitled "Five-Hundredth Episode"--swings for the fences. We don't really *reach* the fences. But let's admire ambition. Amaro pays a visit to SVU because he has teamed up with a noted true crime writer; these two want to free a high-school student, wrongfully imprisoned. Long ago, the kid went away for having murdered his girlfriend, but it seems another community-member may have been responsible. (This part--particularly the references to podcasting--makes me thing of "Serial," and Adnan Syed. But I'm not saying the SVU writers suggest a belief in Syed's innocence.) As the predictable investigation chugs along, it's revealed that Olivia Benson slept with True Crime Writer. Olivia was only sixteen! She wanted to get away from her mother, who disapproved of the relationship, among other things. The Adnan Syed case ends; the Adnan Proxy is freed. True Crime...

  Like most of the world, I'm so fond of Adele, and I can't stop revisiting YouTube. I love that Adele has dismantled her own life every few years, and I love her willingness to pick at the wounds. "Easy on Me" sounds so simple, which suggests that hard work was involved. Oddly, Adele imagines herself as a miner: "There ain't no gold in this river...." Water--baptism--cleansing. "I can't bring myself to swim when I'm drowning in this silence." The chorus seems to be Adele arguing with herself (among other things). "Go easy on me....I was just a child, had no time to feel the world around me...." This is a divided self, someone trying to live with guilt, trying to view past mistakes in a charitable way. I love that there is something unresolved in the song; the sadness creeps along from the start to the finish. This is a tricky endeavor! I'm such a fan.... P.S. Adele underlines the discomfort of her situation with some deli...

  Jerry Pinkney died this week; Pinkney was among the "genius American artists" in children's literature (along with Robert McCloskey, Ezra Jack Keats, Paul Zelinsky, Garth Williams). Pinkney was not the world's greatest writer. His books don't show much evidence of a sense of humor, and excessive wordiness (in "Ugly Duckling," "Nightingale," etc.) is an issue. But Pinkney worked wonders with color and light. His pictures are alive. A favorite of mine is "Puss in Boots," with a bright, plucky cat scheming in rural France, in autumn, sometime around the "Bridgerton" era. My family also loves the "Three Little Kittens," tumbling in leaves. Pinkney thought a great deal about mercy; his famous lion (from the Caldecott winner, "Lion and the Mouse") briefly struggles to show graciousness to a whiny rodent. (Struggles, but succeeds.) The Ant Queen is kind and forgiving to the Grasshopper. The billy goats are gen...

  A story stands or falls on the strength of its characters. This is why the Trump saga can generate so many books. A part of me regrets having started Bob Woodward's "Peril," a book that repeats quite a bit of information already published in Michael Wolff's "Landslide." Once again, we watch Trump's presidency sputter; we watch the embarrassing "stop the steal" weeks; we watch the events of January 6. But there is so much chaos in the Trump World, a new writer can bring out new angles. Woodward has Nancy Pelosi calling military leaders, asking who will be sure that Trump doesn't obtain sole custody of "the football"--and doesn't then start a nuclear war. There is also Melania, shrewdly saying to Trump, "You'd be insane not to hire Bill Barr. He looks like he is straight out of central casting." (Trump then tells Barr, "I like you. You have the right look.") There's Lindsey Graham, involving himself...

 We have the Halloween spirit; we've purchased a rubbery human head with maggots spilling out of one eye socket. My spouse likes to dangle the head in front of our infant, Susie, who is unmoved. (Actually, I'm not sure Susie has the Halloween spirit yet. She keeps her cards close to her vest.) We have been watching suspense thrillers: "The Guilty" (really terrific Jake Gyllenhaal movie), and "The Night House" (with an Oscar-worthy Rebecca Hall). We also tried "Buried," a documentary about a woman in the 1980s who claimed to have confronted new memories of her father; the woman said her father had murdered a kid in the 1960s. The story was mysterious, and not fully satisfying; at least I never felt bored. Josh is exploring "Ten Spooky Pumpkins" (Grimly) and "Ghosts in the House!" (Kohara). Both books are great. Despite having read some tepid reviews, the adults here are looking forward to "Halloween Kills" .......

 Marriage-to-me means that you have to rent "Dear Evan Hansen," which "Smash Cut" tagged as "one of the worst movie-musicals of all time." My husband was a good sport. For approximately one hour, approximately the length of Act One, my husband was enthusiastic. "I don't think Ben Platt looks thirty!" he said. "Do you think he looks thirty?" A big treat arrived when Danny Pino, a former star of "Law and Order: SVU," wandered into the story. "Wait," said Marc. "Detective Amaro is married to Amy Adams now? And he was once married to Laura Benanti? Lucky guy...." But I knew Marc was getting tired when he began to refer to Evan as "Connor." And I understood this. Evan had "CONNOR" printed on his cast, and this seemed to function as a name-tag, and the movie just feels so very, very long. Everyone in my house was delirious for "Words Fail," the endless, formless soliloquy Platt d...

  We are at war over artificial turf. There's a plan to replace real grass with turf in a modest area of Maplewood, and many people in that area are upset. People in less-modest parts of Maplewood tend to be pro-turf (with exceptions). The anti-turf people say: "Maybe turf causes cancer. Turf is ugly." The pro-turf people say: "Our kids can never play soccer because the park in question is a soggy mess." One resident reported that kids were stealing anti-turf signs. Another resident said (bizarrely): "The kids are using their voice  in the only way they can.  It's the kids who suffer--here." In other words, theft of another person's property is a bold political statement by teenagers. The writer went on to qualify his statement, in a puzzling way: "I'm certainly not condoning the teens' choice of action....." I voted for the turf, but now I sort of regret my vote. I think of Disney's "Pocahontas": "You think...

  It's a relief to report that "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" will air on PBS this year; last year, Apple robbed America of that event. I love rankings, so here are my three favorite Great Pumpkin moments (for now): (3) Dramatic irony: Lucy dresses herself as a witch, while announcing.... We must always choose a costume that is in direct contrast to our own personality . (2) Charlie's house visits: "You got candy? I got a bag of rocks...." (1) Charlie, a "ghost," appears under a white sheet with twenty to thirty large holes. "I had some trouble with the scissors." I find this script really inspiring, even after many, many years.

 I'm wary when a picture book is the product of a collaboration. I think, too often, you have a celebrity "writer" with a half-baked idea, and the writer can't be bothered to attempt illustrations, so a pro is drafted to try to make a mediocre effort "sort of glittery." But I really like two picture books by a husband/wife team, Kevin Henkes and Laura Dronzek. Henkes writes the text, and Dronzek provides the illustrations. We're all aware that Henkes could do the drawings if needed--he is one of the major gifted artists at work in picture books--so Dronzek's work doesn't feel "mercenary" to me. Also, Henkes is not Jimmy Fallon; Henkes is actually a writer. In "Birds," he takes on a child's voice. The child remarks on large birds, small birds, green birds, a single red bird on a stripped winter tree, a bird too black to seem three-dimensional. The child describes the strangeness of seven birds on a wire--who sit, and sit, a...

Like most of the country, I'm horrified by the Gabby Petito story. And I keep thinking of a book, "No Visible Bruises," from a few years ago. Here is how I understand the Petito traffic stop. A guy--Brian Laundrie--is driving around with his girlfriend. He goes three times the speed limit and hits the curb. At this point, he is pulled over. The police ask for facts. Both Brian (calm) and Gabby (very distraught) seem to agree that Gabby was striking Brian at some point. Also, Brian grabbed Gabby by the jaw, in anger. Brian says, "Gabby is crazy. She is just crazy." Gabby says, "I just get OCD sometimes, and I apologized, I said I'm so sorry. I have this blog, and he says I'll never go anywhere with it....I was apologizing because I was cleaning up in the back of the vehicle....I was cleaning up too much...." The police take both stories at face value, conclude that Gabby is the primary aggressor, require Gabby to state that she never intended ha...

  This past Thursday gave us another wonderfully-detailed SVU script, and I'll try to highlight main ideas here. First, a recap. A guy is targeting women with children: The rapes occur while the children watch, the women are forced to feign excitement, and if the child speaks, a retaliatory murder will happen. We think the villain is a nasty teen, but in fact it's a jocular ice-cream vendor.  The vendor escapes the consequence of DNA evidence when he says "I visited Y's apartment only to give her daughter a toy she had dropped." But another rape occurs--and, this time, the victim can pick her assailant from a lineup. That's not the end. We'd tend to think both victims would get a moment in court--but the first victim is not "perfect" (she has had multiple partners, recently), and so she is unceremoniously dropped from the paperwork. Olivia calls this act of revision  misogyny , and she's right, and her boss tries to say that he was sparing Vi...

  This fall, I "discovered" the novelist Hilma Wolitzer, who is now around ninety years old. Wolitzer raised a daughter, Meg, who is quite famous because of "The Wife" (which became a Glenn Close movie). Hilma Wolitzer began writing seriously in her forties, and her career continues to this day. The story that is generating buzz--"The Great Escape"--basically recalls Hilma's own struggle with Covid. (Hilma lost her husband of several decades during the pandemic.)  "The Great Escape" immediately takes off; the narrator recalls how, for many years, she would try to initiate sex in the morning, before the kids ran in. But, in the octogenarian phase, the narrator would just check to see if her husband was still breathing. This was enough for gratitude. A living spouse, and then another wonderful mundane day--"breakfast, vitamins, bills, argument, blood pressure pills, lunch, doctor, cholesterol meds, dinner, phone, TV, sleeping pills, sleep,...

  My son's idol, I think, is B--. B, a full year older than Josh, sports a great wardrobe. For example, he has a sweatshirt with braided challah, and a small billboard message: "CHALLAH AT ME!" B also has flying hamburgers on one shirt, and a sweater that features Big Bird, with a simple saying: "JUST CHILL." We're talking about an excellent collection of pieces, worthy of the Met Gala. Josh has the easiest time at school if he holds his lovey, "Mr. Elephant," and on the one day that Mr. E stayed home, Josh's teacher looked at me with real dismay. I felt as if I had disclosed details of the Manhattan Project to enemies within the Soviet Republic. It seems to me that Josh's "school-day heart" is thawing. At least just a bit. We have gone from tears to chilly silence to exuberant singing. The singing is just one word, and one note--"HIII!"--but Josh performs with gusto. Sometimes, I think he sings to light fixtures. We...

 One sign of talent in a painter, or sketcher: his images look like they're alive. I often admire Kevin Henkes for his psychological insights: his mouse who fears that a crack in the wall might open and swallow all living things, his family who worry about over-extensive use of one security blanket, his playground of bullies who like to fixate on one exotic first name. ("A chrysanthemum grows in the DIRT.....with WORMS....") But Henkes is also simply an inspired artist. I'm haunted by his sketches: the squirrel who loses his nut, the kitten who accidentally traps a fly on her tongue, the strange bear-figurine, wary about the arrival of a glass elephant, from India.  I have often pinned my attention to the canonical Henkes books--the mice works, and "Kitten," and "Waiting"--but I'm eager to dip into stranger waters. I have dates with "Egg," "Old Bear," and "My Garden"--in the near future.

  Tonight's 8 PM "SVU" is a rerun (9 PM is new) -- but the 8 PM is worth exploring. 8 PM has one of the creepiest SVU villains--the "post-graduate psychopath." It's a guy from the mid-years of SVU--re-visited. Famously, around eight years ago, Amaro et al. apprehended a kid who enjoyed brutalizing his sister, torturing pets, etc. Tonight's chapter has the kid "graduating" from juvenile detention and re-entering the world. Then it's one chilling scene after another. The kid visits Rollins's child in a playground, gives her a stuffed animal, and makes a reference to her pet cat; all this is enough to alert Rollins that she is in danger. Next, the kid finds Broadway's Andre De Shields (playing a homeless guy)--and Andre De Shields purchases the ropes, the thick duct tape, and the shovels that the kid will "need." (Best not to have the Home Depot receipt obviously connected with the kid. Now the killings begin.) Former "c...

  A recent novel I loved was "Standard Deviation," by Katherine Heiny. Heiny is the real thing--a writer of funny, lively, raunchy fiction, and a writer with an active brain and an active heart. "Standard Deviation" concerns a couple in Manhattan--today. They're Graham and Audra. They have a son who might show signs of autism (the jury's out). Audra chats with everyone, and she lies easily, so Graham is both besotted and generally just a bit skeptical about Audra's fidelity. Meanwhile, Graham has reconnected with his ex-wife, the severe Elspeth, and no one knows where this reunion is headed. Elspeth's reemergence in the world is the main plot in the novel; Graham considers an affair, and also pokes at and investigates old wounds from the first marriage (wounds never previously addressed). Audra seems delighted by Elspeth, but also sometimes startled. For example, Audra's jaw drops when Elspeth declares that she "hates restaurants." Audr...

 Around 71 years ago--on October 2, 1950--Charlie Brown was introduced to the world. An unidentified bystander spots Charlie approaching. "Good Ol' Charlie Brown!" "Ol' Charlie Brown--yessir!" Charlie passes--beaming. And the bystander whispers--"Charlie Brown.....How I *hate* him!" It's so startling to hear this final sentence. And there is no explanation--because hatred, like other passions, sometimes grows out of absolutely nothing. For example, having never seen "Ted Lasso," I have nurtured a deep hatred for "Ted Lasso." Good Ol' Ted Lasso--how I hate him! This makes me think of great "Charlie" lines...."My anxieties have anxieties...." "Last night, I dreamt that somebody loved me...." "I'm even too tired to cry....." Happy Birthday to Mr. Brown.

 I think we are all, to varying degrees, cracking under the pressures of adult life. And I think one sign of a substantial "crack" can be: the state of the dog. On my back road, we have Buster, who could use some care. Buster himself is delightful, but Buster's owners seem overwhelmed. Their fence is crumbling, and they haven't found time to address the problem; instead, they have erected a kind of symbolic faux -fence, which makes me think of the barricade from "Les Miserables." There is actually a child's plastic "steering wheel" in this fence. And a rotting wooden plank. And a few fallen branches, some bright-rainbow bits from a rake, some wires. Because this fence does nothing, nothing at all, Buster just steps over the steering wheel and finds himself in our own yard. Or in any number of yards. No one here wants to be confused with the family that owns Buster. In fact, at a cocktail party, you might hear someone murmur, "We live on th...

  Arnold Lobel and James Marshall were both drawn to one word--"surprise." These men were fond of situational irony, and of course a "surprise" plot lends itself to irony. When you imagine you're going to surprise someone, often God will twist events in odd ways, so that *you yourself* are surprised. In Lobel's great story, "The Surprise," Frog imagines he'll (covertly) pamper Toad. He'll rake the leaves in Toad's yard. At the same time, Toad plans to perform a similar secret act for Frog. But God delivers the *actual* surprise: Wind ruins both amphibians' work, and the amphibians go to sleep in blissful ignorance, just knowing they have performed a loving act. Years later, James Marshall responded with "The Surprise (Hippo Version)." Here, George squirts cold water on Martha; he thinks that this trick is delightful and fun. But Martha retaliates with a full month of silence. It's only the falling of technicolor leaves...

  I'm a little bit obsessed with the new Henkes picture book ("A House"), which is like a sonnet. There are four short "scenes" about a house. Where are the doors? Where are the windows? Where is the sun? Where are the birds? Where is the moon? The stars? Where are the clouds? The puddles? In the fifth scene, snow falls--and this nice surprise causes a change in the rhythm: SO MUCH SNOW! Where is THE HOUSE----? Then, a coda. Pets begin to arrive, and people. What are they doing? They are COMING HOME. I love that you're looking for patterns even if the search is in your subconscious mind. And I like how Henkes effortlessly takes on the voice of a child. ("So much snow!" "Look! Here comes a dog....") You can bet my son has heard all this a bit more than he might like.....