Liars and Saints

 Sometimes, my friend seems like a Kripalu counselor, and not a speech therapist living in South Orange. "You're having trouble with the bedtime routine?" she says. "Each step should be full of sensory delight. Your son should actually eagerly look forward to all of the little tasks before sleep. Taking a bath should be a soothing journey; the bubbles should calm and reassure him." My son throws himself out of the bath, nude, and grabs a framed picture from the wall. He tosses it off the balcony, so it splats on the wooden floor far, far below. "Attention!" he shouts. "It's HAMMER TIME!" "Hi, Josh," says my spouse. "Did you enjoy your soothing sensory experience?" It's fun to see my son's mind expanding, and to hear the evidence. He now knows to barter; if bedtime is approaching, he will request to "see the beach," "take a drive," "watch a storytime." If he attempts something new a...

Here is the start of an amazing story, "Me Talk Pretty One Day": At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and having to think of myself as what my French textbook calls "a true debutant." After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich. Sedaris thinks about the rhythm of his sentences. The punchline--"debutant," "ham sandwich"--is at the very end. But here's the thing that is really special about him. Most people would write a cute "culture clash" essay about France: "Look, Paris is really crazy!" But Sedaris understands that he has a real opportunity to write about something much more interesting, i.e., social anxiety: I remind myself that I am now a full-grown man. No on...

 Sondheim loved ambivalence, and he loved Comden and Green. These two could find a poem in a small moment of tension: Where has the time all gone to? Haven't done half the things we want to. Oh well, we'll catch up some other time. The speaker is upset that a playdate is ending. He had a big bag of time and now--magically--it's empty. Just when the fun is starting-- Comes the time for parting. But let's just be glad for what we had-- And what's to come... If you have to command yourself to feel glad, it's likely you don't feel glad. There is a hint of melancholy in between the lines. There's so much more embracing Still to be done, but time is racing. Oh well, we'll catch up some other time. That last line is repeated, and repeated, and repeated. It's like the speaker has to persuade himself it's true. And who knows if we'll catch up some other time? That's life. Time is racing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xVRVfqAV0s

  I'm at my most ridiculous when I take my children to the Cheesecake Factory; I try to get both kids to watch iPhone screens, as if to trick them. "We're not actually having the experience we're having. We are with Princess Ariel, in a secret aquatic Versailles!" Always, I order from the "Skinnylicious" menu, because I think it's absurd. I can picture the Cheesecake CEO. "Americans are so dumb, we can tell them certain kinds of smothered steak will make them skinny! The steak won't just be a reduced-calorie-intake scenario. It will actually  remove  weight from the diner. It will make the diner look like Gwyneth Paltrow!" It's probably better to eat "al fresco." The children are always slightly calmer if they're in the open air. But the Cheesecake Factory is a known quantity--and if you go somewhere with outdoor seating, you're risking chaos. Recently, a stoner waiter forgot the kids' order three times--and I ...

  "Theater Camp" has problems: It's a rip-off of an Anna Kendrick movie ("Camp"), and it's inferior to the movie it is ripping off. It's cute when a little kid tries to sing "Epiphany" from "Sweeney Todd," but we've already seen this joke. Kendrick did "The Ladies who Lunch" in her movie, "Camp." But there is one lovely, weird story within "Theater Camp," and I wasn't expecting this: Secretly, the movie is about outgrowing a friendship. It's about being in your twenties and recognizing that a certain bond has changed, not because of any kind of enmity, but just because of life. At the center of "Theater Camp," a gay man and his bestie have a co-dependent arrangement ("We're codependent!"); they are not the actors they want to be, but at least they can have a laugh as camp counselors. Each year, they write a new musical together; this one show is the annual prestige proj...

   "Freaks and Geeks" seems like a spiritual sequel to "My So-Called Life."  Famously, "Life" begins when its teen protagonist dyes her hair and decides she wants a new best friend. "Geeks" starts with its heroine renouncing the Mathletes--and skipping Latin class on a Tuesday. The heroine--Linda Cardellini--has a new crush (Jason Segel). The crush takes her to his garage to show off his drum set, and he offers unsolicited advice: "You have to find the one thing that you live for. The thing that throws on all the lights. And just live for that. I'm nuts about these drums. My drums are why I am on this planet...." Later, Cardellini's father is enraged about the missed Latin class. "It's only the basis for our entire civilization. I believe that Janis Joplin skipped some of her classes. And do you know what happened to her? She died." Cardellini's mother deploys another kind of tactic: "I'm just relieved...

 Sometimes, I think I live in a Richard Russo novel. Russo writes beautifully (and a little viciously) about small-town life. In one novel, a large portion of a cemetery is set aside for flat graves--and a resident of the town observes that people are just going to drive over the graves (making a shortcut from Blockbuster to the grocery store). Unthinkable! But the pitiless resident is correct. In Russo's new book, a candidate for office wants ads that say: "We're Not Happy Until You're Happy." But he fails to notice an error in the printing; actually, the ads say, "We're Not Happy Until You're Not Happy." My town has bad drivers, but also confusing traffic signs. When people complain about the signs, a loud minority says, "It's not the signs! It's bad driving! People just need to learn to  drive better !" ....Curiously, this refrain seems to accomplish nothing.  My husband tried to address the issue by posting a photo of a car ...

  I'm a sucker for small-town stories where you see the entire town in action. "Broadchurch," "Friday Night Lights," "To Kill a Mockingbird": These are ideal choices for me. For this reason, I'm in love with the Golden Age of "The Simpsons," and I'm especially devoted to Season Three/Four.  This is one extraordinary episode after another. For example, in "I Love Lisa," little Lisa Simpson feels bad for Ralph, so she gives him a valentine: an image of a train, with the words, "I Choo-choo-choose You." Ralph falls deeply in love, and Lisa tries to wiggle out of this entanglement. Homer says, "I've heard every possible excuse. Tell him you're engaged! You have a rare fatal disease! You can't leave the house in the sunlight!" Lisa politely tells the truth, but Ralph's misguided father says, "Ralph, you must never let a dream die!" The pain and awkwardness in this situation makes me t...

  *"Murder at the Vicarage," by Agatha Christie. People say Christie, at her best, was able to write lifelike characters, and "Vicarage" is cited as an example. I do like Christie's sense of humor in this book. A middle-aged vicar lives with his flighty spouse, Griselda, who can't take an interest in keeping house. "It seems like when I really try, the meals are actually worse than when I'm just phoning it in." When a murder occurs, the men of the town lose their cool, and it's elderly Miss Marple who says, "Everyone has terrible secrets. Human nature is far darker, far more frightening, than you're willing to admit." I also admire Madame Lestrange, who hates having visitors; she just sits in her living room, with the lights out, until the doorbell stops ringing. *"Yoko," by Rosemary Wells. One wonderful trick in a Wells book is a quiet way of pointing out how adults can be wrong. Yoko's classmates mock her sus...

 People sometimes ask about my frenemy. A guest might arrive and say, "Can I see him through the window? Is he near?" Here is the update. My frenemy may or may not have discovered that I was keeping a journal about his behaviors. (He could have learned this through Facebook.) A long while ago, my spouse and I were going to host this guy for drinks, and he didn't show up, and didn't text. When we asked what was happening, he casually alluded to having been stuck in traffic--and this was the mysterious end to the day. A close reader of this story had a suggestion: "You should leave little seeds in your blog, and then see if the seeds alter this guy's behavior. If you see new behaviors, then you know the person is reading what you write. You could say....Free Ice Cream in Town, 5 to 6....and if he shows up at the village creamery at 5:30? Bingo...." I don't have anything against my frenemy. Our interactions just seemed to be an opportunity for thinking ...

 I can see why Luke Combs is drawn to "Fast Car"; it's a great song. I'm not sure that I'm ready to fence off these verses from all interested straight white men--but I can understand that the issue is complicated, at the least. Anyone who pretends the question isn't complicated....is just being disingenuous. One thing I like about Tracy Chapman's work is that the song itself is "a fast car." It collapses ten or fifteen years into a few swift verses. It's an entire marriage--from courtship to divorce. It's also pitiless; there is nothing "gauzy" in the verses. Finally, it's a suspense tale; it's like someone is turning the screws, tighter and tighter. (If country music is about characters and storytelling, then "Fast Car" is "a country song." It makes me think of Taylor Swift, although Chapman seems to have a worldliness that Taylor Swift could only dream about.) Like someone in a Kafka story, the her...

  As the Emmy Awards approach, I'm preemptively annoyed about "Succession."  Some writers say that the final hour of a TV series shouldn't carry much weight; it's just one episode. There shouldn't be an obsession with the idea of "sticking the landing." But I think this is ridiculous. The ending is crucial. It's when you lay your cards on the table. A good ending should feel like a culmination; it should be sort of miraculous. You wouldn't read Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" or Alice Munro's "Labor Day Dinner" if the final paragraphs were really, really bad. You wouldn't say, "Ah, well, we should probably hand this writer several National Book Awards, even if he/she failed to stick the landing." No, these two stories are remembered *because of* their endings. Wonderful pieces of writing become sublime in their final lines. I had misgivings about the conclusion of "Succession" because I remembe...

  I am increasingly aware of moms--they're usually moms--who cannot find an "on-road," a way of returning to the working world. One mom I particularly like complained, via Facebook, that she could not get a job "despite my advanced degree in French literature." She said that all she could find was a position with very, very small children, and the pay was fourteen dollars per hour. People always react strangely to this issue: "Teaching is a lofty calling! What a privilege and honor! Go teach!" I notice that the people who tend to glorify the life of a teacher...are, in fact, very far from the teaching profession. And their misty view of the nobility of "classroom life" never seems to lead them to exit the office and enroll in night school at Bank Street.... Another favorite mom wrote, "I am so lonely and sad. I dream of working, but I don't see how this is realistic until both of my children are in school. I think I'm wading thro...

Some thoughts about British musicals; I'm borrowing from a new book, "When the British Musical Ruled the World." *Decades ago, a French writer went to see a revival of "Oliver!" He made note of Mr. Bumble, Bill Sykes, Nancy, Fagin. Suddenly, major French characters began dancing around in his head--Gavroche, Eponine, Valjean. He had a vision; he could no longer concentrate on "Oliver!" This is why we now have a musical version of "Les Miserables." *The big "Miss Saigon" showdown centered on Jonathan Pryce. Actors were (understandably) furious that a white British man would be traveling to America to play an Asian character. In London, Pryce actually wore prosthetics and bronzer to "look Asian." The producers observed that the Pryce character was only half-Asian--and some wondered if this was a cynical move to make Pryce's casting seem more palatable. (Not a great move, in any case. Imagine if someone chose Norbert Leo ...

  There is a strange trend on Facebook where people post fulsome, cliched tributes to dead loved ones. You tend to feel you're reading a comforting lie. If it's not a lie, it's a half-truth. Something is omitted. "I miss you more today than I did ten years ago.....I remember your gentle laugh....As a friend, you were The Greatest of All Time...." Stephen Sondheim anticipated this trend. In "Follies," a woman is unhappily married and hoping to "re-team" with her boyfriend from an earlier era. She can't say this, so she tells a story in which she is buoyed by her husband's devotion. First, she lightly mocks herself (and you can tell she isn't laughing, as she pretends to laugh): Every morning--don't faint! I tend the flowers.... Can you believe it? Every weekend...I PAINT! For umpteen hours.... She says she can handle a monotonous life, because she is floating on warm currents of married love: In Buddy's eyes.... I'm young...

 "Cocomelon" makes one crucial error; the writers get lazy about the potty. When you have that funny feeling way down low... Stop what you're doing and go, go, go! Any reasonable child might ask, "Go? What does this mean?" That's why my spouse and I were happy to find "Tom's Toilet Triumph," a shocking animated film from the semi-recent past. Someone loved this story enough to play it on a TV screen and film the screen, then post the grainy footage on YouTube. Tom is a British boy who struggles with the potty, although he looks like he is thirty years old. First, he renounces his diapers; next, he identifies a squirmy feeling as an urge to pee. The meticulous narrator explains that he can pee on his bottom or standing up--and we all see the pee spilling into the translucent toilet. Later, Tom murmurs, "My bum might explode." This is his cue to poop; the narrator observes that poop can be trickier than pee. "It may take a while; y...

  A few last remarks on "You Hurt My Feelings".... When Julia Louis-Dreyfus imagined her career, she just thought she would be an actor. Comedy was not "the plan." It came to pass that all her roles were funny, because "funny" seemed to be what she could do. It's Nicole Holofcener who has allowed JLD to stretch in a professional way. (Good comic actors should be offered dramatic roles. Vince Gilligan understands this, i.e., with Odenkirk, Michael McKean, Carol Burnett....Another example is Bridget Everett, in "Somebody Somewhere.") In the new Holofcener movie, JLD's character writes a novel entitled "The Dark Hallway." This could also be the name of the movie itself; JLD is groping through a dark tunnel, moving from one room to another. She has built herself up after a difficult childhood; her father routinely called her "Shit-for-Brains." Her ballast has been her husband--but her husband secretly dislikes her new work...

  Katherine Heiny’s new book ("Games and Rituals") begins with a joke: Colette has been a driving examiner for twelve years—she’s thirty-six—and yet it only occurs to her today that Ted Bundy had had a driver’s license. And that means that some driving examiner had taken him for a road test. Think about it: some driving examiner had willingly clambered into Ted’s VW bug and driven off with him. Maybe the driving examiner had even been a woman. A woman who never knew she had ridden next to Death, never knew she had docked Death points for improper clutch control. Why has Colette never thought of that before? But she thinks of lots of things lately that she hasn’t thought about before. So much about this is admirable. The arrival of Ted Bundy, in the first sentence, makes a reader “lean in.” Then the choice of words shows care and thoughtfulness: “VW bug,” “clambered in,” “improper clutch control.” The final twist establishes a kind of mystery: Why is Colette thinking o...

 1. The beach is about birdies and shells. Too often, I spend my "beach time" reading. My toddler has reminded me that this is in fact a time to admire weird, aggressive seagulls. 2. No one will force you to watch "Indiana Jones V." It seems to me that life, at least my life, is about marriage, family relationships, and petty moments of irritation in small neighborhood stores. Does a new Hollywood blockbuster focus on any of these matters? No? Then you don't have to watch it. Really, you don't. 3. West Orange is a destination. If you have small children, it's always possible to strap them into the back of the car, drive to an empty parking lot, then do this over and over until you have filled a slow hour on a Tuesday afternoon. The best option is to plan your drive around Terry Gross. She is especially fun when she is sassy: "Alito accepted a free ride on a private jet because, in any other scenario, the seat would have been empty? I'd like t...

 One "rule" of detective fiction is that the star should be mostly admirable; PD James, Ruth Rendell, and Donna Leon have all invented sleuths who would also make fine spouses. (I think Rendell explicitly said, "I knew I'd spend many years with Wexford, so I decided I'd invent a guy I liked.") Anthony Horowitz breaks the rule. In his celebrated Horowitz/Hawthorne series, he makes the detective (Hawthorne) obnoxious. Hawthorne is openly homophobic, snide, and maybe incapable of feeling emotions. He says, "I don't really care about the greater good. Most of the murderers I catch have no intention of committing subsequent murders. The harm has already occurred. My work is all a game to me." This is just one startling invention in the world of Horowitz. Also, Horowitz inserts himself into the action; he is a writer, a colleague of Hawthorne, and so he observes each case as it unfolds. This allows him to poke fun at the detective genre. In one novel...

  Dear Audra McDonald, It's your birthday week. Happy Birthday. Thank you for all you have given the world. Early in your career, you were identified as the next Barbra Streisand. (You met Barbra in person, and she was rude to you. Your friend Zoe Caldwell told you not to be a quivering puddle of jelly. "Remember your dignity--around Barbra." This advice really molded you, and you still talk about it in public.) Unlike Barbra, you did not quickly turn your back on Broadway. You used your gift to bring attention to new composers (who were mostly unworthy of you). Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa--each owes you major thanks. You brought "Marie Christine" to Broadway; also, you did "110 in the Shade" and "Ragtime," and quirky, small versions of "Dreamgirls" and "Passion." These were important shows for me. In recent years, TV has made certain demands, and you have spent valuable months on low-value proj...

 I'm amazed by the idea of moral growth; I have worked with children before, but never with three-year-olds. Also, one's students tend to behave; there is something different when the child in question is your own child. Your own child knows you're not the teacher; you're just the parent. So anything goes. My son is irritated, so he unhinges his jaw and grinds his teeth into my forearm. "I don't mind that move so much," says my spouse, "because it makes me think of a little puppy...." At other times, my son wants to set the stage for his own wrongdoing. "Hi," he'll shout, in a sort of delirious way. "Hi, Papa!" And he'll lock eyes with me as he pulls a large clump of basil up from the soil, out of the garden. We're told that the root of controlling behavior is a sense of inner chaos; if I feel a kind of roiling motion within my own interior life, I can act out by policing others' choices. And so my son is inten...

 "Rent" has one mostly legible story, about a struggling songwriter named Roger. (We can assume Roger is the lead male character; in the nineties, Adam Pascal was Tony-nominated in the "Lead Actor" category.) Roger is drawn to a young person named Mimi, but he has PTSD from a bad affair. He rejects invitations--in a nasty way--and he is distrustful by default. At the same time, he can't help but flirt with Mimi. And these two push each other to do good things, i.e., returning to school (Mimi) and making use of a pen and paper (Roger). An actual story unfolds, through showing, not telling; the Roger/Mimi songs are specific and evocative ("Light My Candle," "Another Day," "I Should Tell You," "Without You," "Goodbye, Love"). I think Roger's story is an entire musical; unfortunately, "Rent" is bloated. It's almost three hours long. Jonathan Larson throws many, many wet noodles at the wall. One wet ...

 "Causeway" is the dictionary definition of a three-star movie: Risks are taken, sometimes props are mishandled. Jennifer Lawrence juggles colorful beanies, and drops several--but, still, it's a spectacle! Lawrence is a woman in her thirties who has just returned from Afghanistan. Her nurse, Jayne Houdyshell, is helping her to reenter civilian life. The nurse is quietly excellent; she explains that she was once assisting a wounded friend, and she noticed how much she enjoyed the work, and this led to a professional "second act" in her own life. Lawrence, perhaps envious, makes a kind of sneering expression and says, "You have a miserable job." Then she is appalled to think back on the words that have just slipped out of her own mouth. Lawrence claims that she is so, so eager to return to combat. But eventually her actual story spills out: She was in a tank when an explosion occurred. She looked to one side and saw her comrade in flames. She understood ...

  After the principal fired my child's teacher, the principal herself was fired. Maybe not "fired." She is on administrative leave. A paraprofessional blew a whistle, with reference to a head teacher. The head teacher had allegedly mistreated a pre-verbal child. The child's parents then claimed that the teacher had dangled the child by his feet and administered a kind of "shaking/jiggling" punishment. (Who was the source for these details, if the child was pre-verbal?) Not a good look--and so the principal disappeared. The fracas led to renewed interest in a 2018 event from the principal's career. Back in 2018, the principal worked with a student-teacher who had restricted growth ("dwarfism"). The principal took a photo of this student-teacher and sent it to a colleague, and the caption was "LOL." Lawsuits ensued--and a career seemed to be close to its end. But some parents lobbied for the principal: "She apologized, and, as a wo...

 Sometimes, I forget to give proper credit to Tim Rice, because I just think of the later stages of his career. I think of a little lion, singing: I'm gonna be the MANE event.... Like no king was before.... But, in his youth, Tim Rice had the idea for "Evita." He was riding in a cab, and he heard a radio story about Eva Peron--and he realized that this could be a grand Cinderella musical with a tragic ending. He thought he'd dream up songs for Evita's sassy hairdresser, who would mock and critique Eva throughout various tuneful interludes. But then he began to read about Che Guevara, and he thought, "Aha, I can have *two* icons up on the stage...." Elaine Paige had done "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar," but she had grown tired of musicals. She kept making it to final call-backs only to lose high-profile roles. Her father said, "You must have something, or else you wouldn't get all these runner-up titles...." These wor...