Liars and Saints

  A series I liked in the pandemic was "Cruel Summer." Prestige TV tends to involve a man warring against a man. This is the template for "Breaking Bad," "Deadwood," "The Americans" (with a slight twist), "Justified," "Bloodline," "Billions," "Succession." "Damages" had a woman warring against a woman. "Cruel Summer" strays farther from the template: The two "warriors" are women, but *young* women. They aren't done with high school yet. Additionally, the particular conflict in "Cruel Summer" is really, really weird. A blonde goes missing for several months; while in captivity, she believes that a local brunette has spotted and ignored her; a PR battle happens when the brunette sues the blonde for having made a false allegation. Everything can be questioned, as in "Damages": Did anyone actually "see" anyone else? What happened while the blonde w...

  Josh has a new friend, and it's his sister, Susie. For a long while, these two existed in separate spheres. Josh wouldn't acknowledge Susie so much; he would just acknowledge her bottle, a bottle he wanted very badly. But now Susie is beginning to babble, and she sometimes stares with admiration at her brother, as if she were seeing the face of God. Josh has a few standard interactions with Susie. When she cries, he will say  Why? Why?  .....as if importuning the Heavens.  Josh will also pat Susie's head, as if to say,  You're doing fine, kid. Hang in there. Finally--if Josh has an audience, i.e. the pediatrician--Josh will valiantly *offer* a bottle to Susie. I call this  Potemkin Village Behavior . Josh will never, never offer the bottle to Susie if an authority figure isn't watching. And that's all right. This is like how I'm generally sunny and calm in business emails, though my great wish is to shrink into the fetal position and cry. I'm very fond...

 One way to remember Betty White is via "The Proposal." This movie came out in 2009; White plays "Gammy," a strange, horny person in her late eighties. Gammy's grandson, Ryan Reynolds, gets involved in a sham marriage with Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock. Bullock needs the marriage because she is an emigrant from Canada, and she has an expired visa. But important men in suits suspect that the marriage isn't real; to prove her commitment, Bullock flies to Ryan Reynolds's ancestral Sitka, Alaska, to spend a weekend with Reynolds's mother, Oscar-winner Mary Steenburgen. Steenburgen does very little--but that's fine, because Gammy appears on the scene. I think the writers just wanted Betty White to say something outrageous every five minutes, so here's what we get: Betty White attends a strip club and screams at the male stripper: "Give it to me! Give it to me hard!" Betty White makes lewd eyes at her grandson as she presents him with a spe...

 This is a love letter to Amy Ryan, who really steals the show in "Only Murders in the Building." The Times focused on Martin Short; I can understand this. Martin Short is amazing. His speech about "Splash: The Musical" will always stay with me. "The floor was meant to roll back to reveal a swimming pool....but the gears were clogged....So one chorus boy jumped, and smashed his face on the stage. Then the next boy. And the next. And the next...." If you followed "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark," or the tales of various "Lion King" castmates, permanently crippled by puppetry tasks, then you'll enjoy the Martin Short character. I also liked Short's bizarre speech about a colleague. "There once was a lonely child, and that child grew up to be STEPHEN JOSHUA SONDHEIM. The thing about Sondheim? When he is good, HE IS GOOD. When he is off, well, I'M PATIENT." This captures something crucial about the ritual of an Upper We...

 A tour-de-force picture book looks easy--but of course the task isn't easy. Russell Hoban wrote "Bedtime for Frances" and landed a "win," and so, superstitiously, he gave "B" titles to several subsequent books: "Bread and Jam for Frances," "Baby Sister for Frances," "Bargain for Frances." Frances is a great character; she isn't a brat, and she isn't perfect. She doesn't want to go to bed. Her parents send her off--and the emotions drummed up by bedtime lead Frances to feel confused. "Did you kiss me, Mother?" Frances asks. The question is a stalling tactic, but it's also a real question: Frances is living through an inner storm, and she doesn't actually recall whether she has been kissed. Next, Frances invents reasons to be awake. The cloak near the bed is a monster. The wind on the glass is a monster. The crack in the ceiling holds a monster. Frances never seems really horrified; instead, sh...

  Diablo Cody made a movie, "Tully," about a childcare provider who is part-saint--and the provider rescues puffy-eyed Charlize Theron from despondency. I think of this sometimes when I see my child's occupational therapist, who sort of reminds me of God. Life is a long series of consultations with experts--some good, some bad--and the good ones are the ones who listen.  My child's OT is serene when tantrums occur. This is because the source of the tantrum is a small, adorable child--and the OT hangs onto that fact. She says, "Why don't you just breathe deeply, and your kid will notice this." (And I think of advice from Al-Anon: You can't really *force* sobriety onto an alcoholic, but if you live your own life in a thoughtful way, you might just inspire change in another person.) Sometimes, the bulk of the hour is silence: My kid might be focused, in a little rocking chair, or exploring a small buzzing massage toy. Then, the OT has several ideas, and...

 Tessa Hadley began her adult life as a schoolteacher; she found the work so difficult, she would wake up in a panic every day. When she escaped to a new role--motherhood--she would tell herself, "No matter how many tantrums there are, no matter the tears.....I do NOT have to teach today." As her kids grew older, Hadley found herself writing about Henry James, and she found herself writing stories. She badly, badly wanted to publish her fiction--and so, in her mid-forties, she launched a new career. Now, in her sixties, she is seen as one of the great writers of realist fiction, next to Colm Toibin, Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel. "Free Love," Hadley's new novel, is about family. (All her books are about family.) It's 1967, and a woman, Phyllis, finds herself vaguely interested in the revolutionary stirrings in London. Phyllis is forty and trapped in an "OK" marriage, with children. A young guest--a friend's son--visits, and Phyllis tries to flirt....

 For a long while, I thought there was one proper response to another person's pain; the response was a kind of bullying-disguised-as-cheerfulness. If someone said, "I hate the cold!" ....you could say, "Nonsense! Cold weather is vivifying, and the snow is so pretty!" You might imagine your friend would then say, "Of course! How could I have been so foolish?" But in fact you'd get a puzzled--or even a hurt--stare. My knee-jerk bad habit almost emerged last night, when my husband mentioned his distress about the Bengals and the Super Bowl. I almost said--cruelly--something ridiculous, i.e. "Every city deserves a chance!" But I was able to see and hear myself, and I ended my statement before it started. This was a victory! One of my favorite observations about empathy occurs in "The Moons of Jupiter," by Alice Munro. The narrator is sitting with her ailing father, who has always shown derision toward her writing career. (Of course...

 This is a rave for "As We See It," the new Amazon drama. Jason Katims is a major TV power-player--he seems to be in the ranks of Dick Wolf, or the Kings, or close by--and he now has three big triumphs ("Friday Night Lights," "Parenthood," "As We See It"). The Katims "formula" can become wearying. Major characters will gather in the season finale at a graduation, competitive event, or awards ceremony--and plotlines will intersect. At some point, the hero will receive an offer for a prestigious out-of-town job--and the offer will get rejected, because "ambition isn't everything." (I tend to dislike this plotline!) Secrets and lies and rumors will spread--and well-intentioned adults will struggle with privileged information, and sometimes innocent people will shoulder the burdens of injustice (as in actual life). "As We See It" is a weak title, but I understand what Katims wants to do: He wants us to grasp that his...

  Tipping a hat to Mo Willems, who wrote "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!" I believe in the power of titles. A good title can hook you on a piece of writing; a good title can even paper over little flaws. To me, some of the most-potent titles are: "Kitten's First Full Moon," "Sex and the City" (so much stronger than "AJLT," the sequel's title), "Open Secrets," "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.," "Murder on the Orient Express." It seems to me that "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive Bus!" is a title that deserves to be in the Title Hall of Fame. We meet a driver, who urges us to prevent a pigeon from attempting to drive. Then the pigeon arrives. He wines and dines, flirts and barters. He says he'll just steer. He has a cousin who drives, and that cousin is fine. The pigeon pouts and uses all-or-nothing language ("I never get to do ANYTHING!") He attempts a trick. He offers to do ...

 Several months ago, a student at Regis High School wrote an important piece for the NYTimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/nyregion/regis-catholic-school-racism.html The student's parents emigrated to America from Jamaica. The student, in his Times piece, describes being at Regis, a prestigious high school, and describes noting the casual racism of several white classmates. In one case, a white student had been "caught" in making a stupid remark, and he was immediately expelled. The expulsion must have felt satisfying to administrators: swift action! But students scratched their heads. Had the expulsion taught anything--to anyone? Was it possible the kid who made the dumb remark would just wander into a new school, enraged and confused, eager to double-down on his racism? Nevertheless, the Times writer eventually found himself reporting a *new* racist remark to a teacher. And he felt relieved. That's because Regis didn't choose to respond with something slop...

 Janet Jackson began her career in sit-coms; she was under the age of ten, and people were telling her she was "too chubby." In her teens, she began her solo musical odyssey. Early efforts were modest, but young Janet soon seized the creative reins and made "Control," a buzzy album. This led to "Rhythm Nation," a world-storming effort, a source of one of the most-influential music videos in history (for the title song). "Rhythm Nation" had seven top-five singles; this just doesn't happen, or happen often. Janet invented her own viscerally thrilling dance moves; watch "Escapade," and you'll see the template for Britney Spears's career, and you'll also see little proto-Lady-Gagas. At the height of her powers, Janet had one real rival--Mariah Carey--and that rival couldn't dance. As a gay boy in the heartland, I had minimal patience for blockbuster films about straight men bombing buildings. I understand that Sissy Spac...

 "Being the Ricardos" is a shaky movie, with a weak script, and Nicole Kidman's performance is not one of her best. Nevertheless, I love Ms. Kidman, and I'm ready for an Oscar victory. One thing I appreciate about Kidman is her tales of her childhood; she was too pale to "sun" on the Australian beach, so she would stay in and read Dostoyevsky and Ibsen. She understood that *reading* Ibsen might be her one and only chance to "play Nora" -- and she was OK with that. Reading Chekhov, she could "play" Nina or Masha in her head -- and she was OK with that, too. People complain that Kidman's first Oscar win was for a mediocre film, "The Hours," deemed, by Manohla Dargis, "a polite yawn of a movie." People also feel that Kidman didn't need the ridiculous prosthetic nose; Virginia Woolf was once considered a beauty, and the Hollywood makeup department neglected to do some important homework. Kidman is the one and only ...

  My son and I have been re-reading "You Matter," by a young gay man, Christian Robinson. It's pretty clear that Robinson is a genius, and this book should be a first memorable solo effort among *many* great solo efforts. That's my hope. I've written about the book before, but it's worth revisiting. "You Matter" emerged in a time of unrest, when Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were erased from the planet. The possibility that no real consequences would ensue, for the killers, seemed overwhelming, inconceivable. So I think Robinson was responding to the world. "If you believe you don't matter, you're wrong. Regardless of your size, regardless of your current level of vulnerability, you matter." In my teaching career, I was disappointed when certain educators would say: "The child learns about the classroom, first; the child learns about the neighborhood, next; the child learns about the country, eventually, in third grade."...

  First: What happened? Charlotte's child, Rock, was meant to have a "they-mitzvah," but Rock never studied, never made clear that the money and time Charlotte was expending might be for nought, then announced, at the last minute, "I'm not going through with this." As a novelist Tweeted: "With the exception of Anthony, literally every LGBTQ character in this series is an asshole. This seems like progress, in terms of representation...." Miranda chose to torpedo her Human Rights Watch internship. She said, "I'll be flying to California, to support Che." Like Margaret Cho, like Lindy West, like Issa Rae, Che has invented a persona, and the persona has led to a TV pilot. My favorite parts of the finale involved Carrie. In a little twist, Carrie went to lunch with Big's brother--James Naughton, from "Chicago." The point of the lunch was to discuss Big's ashes, so Brother Big said: "Where is John, now?" Awkwardl...

 We have a cast for the movie adaptation (of the musical adaptation of the movie adaptation of the novel)  The Color Purple. I'm surprised that Oscar-nominee Cynthia Erivo isn't the lead performer, and I imagine this subject will be the focus of my Internet-surfing today. On another note: My favorite  Color Purple  moment belongs to Shug, and, in my heart, Shug will always be Heather Headley. Shug is sitting with Celie, and Celie casually describes herself as "ugly," because the world has repeatedly assigned this word to Celie. Startled, Shug disagrees. And she sings something simple and direct to Celie: I've always been the kind of gal That's had a lot to say. I says the things that's on my mind.... Too dumb to shy away. But you hush my mouth and still me With a song I've never heard. I guess that means that you are just-- Too beautiful for words. Shug elaborates. She alludes to her starry past with kings and counts. But: When I see what's in your...

  It's tricky to be married to a football spouse.  I feel deep indifference to the sport--except that I wish that various players would stop assaulting their wives and girlfriends, and I wish that competitors weren't at risk of suffering permanent brain damage (and I wonder if Will Smith's crusading work, in "Concussion," has moved any needles, anywhere). It's also tricky to feel ambivalent toward my hometown--because, if the Buffalo Bills do well, people come to me and say, "How challenging to be a Bills fan married to a Chiefs fan!" I've never been a Bills fan. To me, the best of Buffalo is Joyce Carol Oates. And Christine Baranski. I'd welcome this kind of text: "Go Buffalo! That's a seventh-decade veteran, Baranski, scoring yet another Golden Globe nomination!" To his credit, my husband really limited the crazy-talk this season. He became upset when Buffalo grocers stopped selling KC barbeque sauce--and this was presented to...

I can't ever tire of "Sex and the City," so here are a few new thoughts. Shrewdly, last week, the writers swerved away from the Miranda/Che melodrama. I thought there would be big, predictable fights--and I was wrong. Score one for the writing staff. I'm also a fan of the strange plot the writers actually selected: Charlotte fights with her daughter about using a tampon. To me, this was educational; I hadn't realized there was a thing called tampon angst, and of course I should know that, because most bodily events are just complicated. Charlotte and her daughter struggle with change--"there's no string? did you check your butt crack?"--and the struggle is surprising and plausible. (I would have liked the scenes more if the writers had any real interest in Charlotte's daughter as a human being, but we can't always ask for everything.) I was intrigued by the business about wedding rings. Carrie's young neighbor spots Carrie's ring and ...

  I've been reading "Plainsong," by Kent Haruf, and it's like a rough draft of the TV version of "Friday Night Lights." Both of these works concern small towns; both concern high schools and varied family-shapes. In "Friday Night Lights," there is basically one "conventional nuclear family," then there is a boy raising his younger brother, a single mom with two daughters, a grandmother in charge of a high-school junior, and so on. "Plainsong" has two orphaned, elderly brothers "raising" a girl whose mother has lost her mind. Also, two kids basically take care of themselves when a parent begins confining herself to bed, rejecting food, going unwashed. I liked "Friday Night Lights" best when it steered away from melodrama. For example, many celebrated scenes focused on tiny disagreements between "Coach Taylor" and his wife, Tami: disputes about the annual Panthers BBQ, awkward discussions about post-p...