Liars and Saints

There are many ways to observe the birth of Jesus--tree lightings, chats with Santa, trips to Dyker Heights, etc. But may I suggest: Kristin Chenoweth? I've had few major romantic relationships in my life, but each has involved Kristin. My first partner--before I came out of the closet--took me to the Hamptons to see Kristin in concert. I think we sat behind Ralph Lauren, if he was still alive? Kristin said, "I'm going to perform a little ditty from a show I'm working on, about the witches of Oz. We'll see what happens." I realize none of this is normal--did I wipe tears from my eyes?--but I swear it did occur. At one point, I was a young "straight" man, on a "Kristin Chenoweth" date somewhere near Sag Harbor. Years passed, and, having faced the facts, I found myself entangled with someone of my own gender. These were the "Glee" years. We listened obsessively to Kristin's performance of "Alone," and we visited, and r...

  Today, the NYTimes celebrates one of my favorite writers, Jon Klassen; the critic praises Klassen's subversive gifts. Couldn't say it better myself. Many classic fables and fairy tales involve theft or murder, i.e. "Goldilocks," "Little Red," "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Rapunzel," "Rumpelstiltskin." Klassen returns us to the anarchic world of fairy tales. His stories feature violence, self-delusion, and deceit. It's sort of crazy (and delightful) that, in the era of "Cocomelon" and "Miss Rachel," Jon Klassen is the winner of a Caldecott Medal. I especially like his story, "The Future," which seems to rewrite Chris Van Dusen's "If I Built a School." In the van Dusen tale, the power of the mind is celebrated; a child dreams of an ideal school (perhaps on Mars! with robots!), and the reader can offer three cheers for the wonders of ingenuity. This seems to be the path "The Futur...

 Anne Lamott is the queen of the personal essay, and it's unjust that she doesn't even want to be doing this. She wants to retire. But the stories still come out of her. Lamott's gift is an ability to see material where others would see nothing. Today I woke up old and awful in every way. I simultaneously cannot bear the news and can't turn it off--Gaza, Israel, the shootings in Maine. Cobra hypnosis. The world is dark as a scarab. I have two memorial services this week. A dear friend is dying; she keeps assuring me, "I ain't in no ways tired." And I say, "Stop with that, or I'm not going to visit again." Lamott makes herself a character; she pokes fun at her own hyperbolic misery ("old and awful in every way"). She then highlights her own pettiness. A dying friend's sense of resilience is a pet peeve. "Stop with that!" Who could fail to relate? To me, an essay is a chance to show off various crazed characters--and Lam...

 Sometimes, New York seems to design its own self-parody--and a fine example is the case of Sondheim's last musical. Sondheim allegedly authorized a production of this show right before dying, but I wonder if certain wires were crossed. In the current season of "The Crown," Dodi calls his father, Mou Mou, to deliver news about Diana. He uses a deliberately ambiguous sentence--"An agreement has been reached!"--because he knows his father will misinterpret the news. "This will get people off my back for a while...." I see Sondheim doing something similar: "Joe Mantello, an agreement has been reached!" And Sondheim died, and Mantello was free to make of the nebulous sentence whatever he might have wished. (I have no evidence for this theory.) The site of the Sondheim production is a brutal wind tunnel near the Hudson River; you scale six flights of stairs to reach the stage, and the program features one-eighth of an interview between Frank Rich ...

  Sometimes, an opening is so strong that you immediately know you're in good hands. The new film "Thanksgiving" begins with a Black Friday shopping event. A local business owner hires minimal security, then forces disgruntled employees to chip in at the last minute. The tycoon's thoughtless daughter breaks into the store--several minutes before the official countdown--because her friend needs a new lipstick.  The masses witness this obnoxious move--and a volcano of fury erupts. The surge of the crowd results in several deaths. A shard of glass inserts itself into one human neck. A braid of hair gets stuck in the wheels of a shopping cart, and thus a piece of scalp "frees itself" from a head. One shopper really wants a free toaster oven, so she snatches it from the hands of a corpse. The writer is saying something here: "I promise to deliver in the middle sections, and in the ending, as well." So: you get an interlude in which stainless steel ...

 One reason that I love Roz Chast is that she has invented a wonderful character: her father. Chast has such mesmerizing ambivalence for this deeply anxious, neurotic man, so much compassion and exasperation. The guy can be in a tiny, tiny conflict--and still you're fascinated, because the artist is fascinated. In "Father's Day Memory," Mr. Chast is at war with himself. He wants to instruct his daughter, but he can't find words. His sense of myopia is such that he can offer just two pieces of advice: "Carry your subway token in your hand, and always take care of your teeth." His greatest enemy is the Parachute Jump, at Coney Island--which seems to beckon to him, even as it maintains its own sinister aura. The end of this story is tremendously moving; you suddenly realize you're reading a love letter, from the artist to a dead man. Everything is understated; not one word is out of place. I'm so inspired by Roz Chast. https://www.newyorker.com/maga...

  What a thrill to go to "Hamilton"--for a third time--for my husband's birthday. The current star, Miguel Cervantes, is said to be the definitive Alexander (whatever that means); one thing that helps is that he has actually lost a child. When--as Alexander--he mourns the death of little Junior, you sense an unusual level of actorly authority. My main lens for watching was a consideration of Lin Manuel Miranda's relationship with Sondheim. Miranda has said that Sondheim urged him to look for opportunities to surprise. (A surprise would be moving from "Sweeney Todd" to "Merrily." Or from "Merrily" to "Sunday in the Park.") When Miranda told Sondheim that he was working on a rap musical about the Founding Fathers, Sondheim apparently laughed, with delight, and said, "That's exactly what you should be doing." (Not a shock, then, that Miranda is now pivoting toward a musical adaptation of "The Warriors.") Son...

  It seems strange for Peter Morgan to retell the story of "The Queen," via "The Crown." Poor Imelda Staunton has to compete with Helen Mirren's iconic performance--and she has to do this with a less polished script, in a tighter span of storytelling time. Morgan has lost interest in Tony Blair, I guess, so the Blair speeches get re-purposed as Prince Charles speeches. (Also, some of the Tony Blair work gets pawned off on Princess Diana's ghost!) One thing I liked was Morgan's interest in William and Harry (who are basically missing from the movie). We know that these kids have affection for their mom; we see this in an early scene, as the three drive around, listening to "Tubthumping." Diana pours ice down her older son's back; William (somewhat implausibly) mocks a grown man's choice of clothing. (In a little conspiracy-of-two, William and Diana laugh about Dodi's moccasins). In another nice choice, Diana affectionately teases Wil...

  Taylor Swift's recent work has exciting moments of self-loathing; the obvious example is "Anti-Hero." The song's "sequel" begins with a memory of childhood: Summer went away. Still, the yearning stays. I play it cool with the best of them. I wait patiently. He's gonna notice me. It's OK, we're the best of friends.... Anyway..... There are two voices here; one is a delusional kid who thinks the ne'er-do-well boy will eventually make time for her. Then, there is an adult Taylor, looking over the kid's shoulder, cringing in response to the memory. With her standard, celebrated sense of efficiency, Taylor recalls a decision: I see the great escape. So long, Daisy May. I picked the petals; he loves me not. Something different bloomed-- Writing in my room. I play my songs in the parking lot. I'll run away..... What is so interesting to me is that the ending seems unhappy. In Los Angeles, Taylor isn't self-actualized. She is surrounded...

  So much happens during a "mystery reader" engagement; you're drowning in stimuli. Each child is at the center of a compelling, high-octane drama. The one with sensory issues has his hands over his ears, the little sibling with aching gums has bright red cheeks and occasional convulsions (from the sobbing). A dreamy boy has a memory of playing outside, in the winter; the lesson screeches to a halt as this boy gets lost in his reverie. He is curiously detached from his audience; sentences begin, and meander, and trail off. His voice becomes inaudible. Listless peers stick their fingers in their noses. Two little girls have their shit together (it's generally the girls). They have answers at the ready. They want the train to keep chugging, chugging, chugging along. This year, I chose to read "A Home in the Barn," mainly because we could all sing "Old McDonald," at the end, and we could become various farm animals. The suspension of disbelief is thri...

 A book I liked this year--which seemed to fall under the radar--was Navied Mahdavian's "This Country." Mahdavian has a funny, honest voice; he seems like a trustworthy narrator. In his twenties, he worked as a teacher in San Francisco, but he dreamed of drawing cartoons. You can't live in SF on a teacher's salary, anyway--so Mahdavian and his wife, a documentary filmmaker, moved to a plot of land in rural Idaho. I think Mahdavian understands a basic fact that remains mysterious to most of us: You get only one life. Now is the time to attempt a career in cartooning--and a move to No Man's Land. Mahdavian uses a sharp metaphor: He recalls driving into a skid, and losing control, and the image of the rudderless ship recurs whenever Mahdavian finds himself in a bizarre conversation. A new friend remembers his grandfather, who shot and murdered a neighbor for failing to monitor his sheep. ("Everyone knew the truth, and no one spoke up.") And: Mahdavian t...

  As a teen, Alicia Keys lived in a small apartment in Hell's Kitchen; her mother worked nights and urged her to stay in. But Keys would sneak out to listen to music.  Keys's breakout song--"Fallin'"--uses a simple metaphor for ambivalence. To feel unsure about another person is to "fall," continuously; you're always stumbling. Keys acknowledges that she is a fool, but she can't change her behavior. "Loving you, darling, makes me so confused...." I think it would be almost impossible not to see bits of your own character in Keys's honest self-portrait; it's not a shock that this song launched a major career. OK, the Washington Post listed its books of the year--and I beg to differ. I'm just including some titles, here, that I'd love to see on the "Best in Show" stage. I'm rooting for you, Phillip Lopate. Non-fiction: "Homegrown," by Jeffrey Toobin "Unscripted," by Stewart/Abrams "Im...

 In Mexico, we became students of Elizabeth Taylor; she fell in love with Puerto Vallarta during or after Richard Burton's filming of "The Night of the Iguana." Taylor and Burton bought a villa, and then they bought the villa directly across the street. They constructed an overpass/bridge, modeled on the Bridge of Sighs. When Taylor grew impatient with Burton, she exiled him to the bridge; he would spend a night, or two, in the "shadow villa," before Taylor would rediscover her patience and reopen the doors to the main home.  (Burton was, apparently, a great writer; his diaries are available via Yale University Press. This book is a favorite of Dwight Garner's; Garner reviews new titles for the NY Times.) Marc and I especially admire Liz for her approach to life's Second Act. After she (inevitably) lost her Hollywood luster, she found that she was still a subject of bottomless tabloid fascination. She decided, rather than whine about this, she would find...

  We might think of "man vs. nature" as a special, lofty kind of conflict: the stuff of "Into the Wild," "Into Thin Air," "The Call of the Wild." But you can also find this material in a comic. In "Semi-Lucid Dream," Roz Chast emerges from the grocery store, the "Shop-Away." (This calls to mind certain phrases: "piss away your time," "fritter your life away" ....) Roz's car has disappeared; in fact, the atoms of the universe are conspiring against her. The entire town--the street, the sidewalk--all is rearranged and new. Also, the frozen turkey is gone. Roz takes a deep breath and rallies. In fact, she never bought a frozen turkey, she tells herself. That was just a fantasy in a dream. And the world replies: "You're still fucking lost. Take that." The End. I like the bleakness of this comic, and I like RC's impotent moment of faux-triumph. ("I never bought a frozen turkey!") ...

  The best novel I've read in a while is "Past Lying," by Val McDermid. The writer paused her "Karen Pirie" series during Covid, because she couldn't wrestle with the enormity of the pandemic. But now--with distance--she has written a terrific story about Scotland-in-2021. Sometimes, thrillers neglect the problem of character development; you feel you're reading about stick figures, in various absurd situations. But McDermid really cares about her protagonist, Karen Pirie. She is smart and conflicted; she is in a relationship, but her boyfriend can be impetuous and self-serving. (Also, the boyfriend has found a way to profit off Covid, by selling a homemade hand sanitizer; his lack of interest in charitable donations seems like a bad sign.) As Karen manages inner debates about her love life, she also ponders questions about a document that has arrived on her doorstep. A crime writer has died. He has left his papers with a library. Buried among the papers...

  Last week, an important feminist died; her name was Linda R. Hirshman. Hirshman felt annoyed by a certain kind of feminism--a kind that said staying at home is a valid choice. Many of us believe that no one's decision should be scrutinized, in this area; any option is an OK option. But Hirshman disagreed. She was delightful in her bluntness, her judginess. "Staying at home?" she said. "This is not what Betty Friedan was fighting for. Women need to work. They need to choose top positions in business and law. Perhaps the house will not be clean--but the children will develop robust immune systems." The NYTimes linked Hirshman with Nora Ephron, who observed that an insidious question, in any household, is: "Where is the butter?" This is a question the husband asks the wife. It has many unstated meanings: "Locate the butter for me. Open the butter packaging. Monitor the amount of butter we have in the house. Purchase new butter when we're runnin...

 Sometimes, Roz Chast seems to borrow from Arnold Lobel; Lobel's "Toad" is famously the author of his own problems, and RC's "Roz" has this trait, as well. Toad is self-conscious about a bathing suit; he could just wear it with pride, but this option seems mysteriously unavailable to him. Similarly, Roz has real questions about a new purchase. Instead of thinking twice about her credit card, she unwisely fishes for a compliment. "How do you feel about my NEW SWIM SUIT?" The title of this cartoon is "Downhill Racer"--and you can write the rest, without any hints, if you take a moment and daydream. My favorite line: "The important thing is that YOU like it!" ....It's like I'm watching a documentary about my own life, on the big screen.

 I'm on the record supporting Broadway musicals that are centered on crimes ("Sweeney Todd," "Kimberly Akimbo," "Little Shop"). Another of my favorites--because it seems so counterintuitive--is "Fun Home." A literal crime forms the heart of this show; Bruce Bechdel has been shtupping some underage males. Additionally, consider Bruce's spiritual crime: his way of tormenting himself and, by extension, his family. Bruce's descent into madness, and suicide, is mesmerizing; you almost can't believe you're seeing this on a musical stage. Alison Bechdel's memoir begins with a game of airplane, but it's Lisa Kron's brilliant move to imagine the argument that occurred minutes earlier: Daddy! Hey, Daddy! Come here, OK? I need you. What are you doing? I said, come here. You need to do what I tell you to do. Listen to me. Daddy! LISTEN to me. I wanna play airplane..... This is--apparently--just a kid trying to get her father...

 Like the George and Martha cartoons, Roz Chast's "Mixed Marriage" series is about irony and tension.  Here's an example. A woman--who might be quite close to Roz Chast herself, in spiritual terms--complains about American flag pins. "Bush...McCain....and their STUPID FLAG PINS." The husband only needs to say, "I get it." But instead he points out that Barack Obama also wears a flag pin. No one wins in this scenario; both halves lose. What fun it is to see the particular loss Chast describes! I think I'd enjoy this even if it were just a typed transcript--but the shaky penmanship and the baggy "eye" pouches make me *that much* happier. This is a favorite of mine.

 I think that the worth of a smart title can't be overstated; "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a playful, memorable title that lets you know you're in good hands. I love this movie in part because it's the story of an artist; it's really a cartoon version of the Second Act of "Sunday in the Park with George." Also, it finds new variations on a fish-out-of-water theme (a theme that is at least as old as "Curious George" and Tomi Ungerer's "Rufus the Bat"). If a ghoul traveled to the North Pole, he would of course confuse Santa Claus with "the Sandy Claws." And he might think that a shriveled body-less head is an appropriate gift to leave under a tree. A third thing I love in this film is Sally, who dreams of independence. Trapped in the lair of a mad scientist, Sally tries to poison her captor with deadly Worm's Wort. She conceals the scent with Frog's Breath. When the scientist becomes suspicious, Sally do...

 I think Katherine Heiny is a genius, but also, she is a genius who writes funny and suspenseful stories about couples with young children who live on the East Coast of the United States. So, she is like my dream writer. This is how it began. At least, this is how it began for Lindy. Like so many other nights, with Lindy getting home from the station as Rob was leaving for acting class. They kissed quickly and then Lindy began unbuttoning her coat while Rob zipped his up. A couple dressing and undressing in reverse. "The girls are in bed--waiting for stories," Rob said, his sentences jerky as he wound a red scarf around his neck. "Maud skipped her nap--lunches are packed for tomorrow--chili for dinner." Lindy wondered if the scarf was new. It looked expensive. Sometimes Rob went through periods of buying himself luxuries--a cashmere scarf, a Muji turtleneck, a new watch strap--which they couldn't afford. But then it would be followed by a period of frugality, so...

 The opening of a musical needs to set a certain tone. "Alexander Hamilton" offers information about young Alex, and it shows that your evening will be "about" tenacity and innovation--but, most importantly, it acquaints you with the particular sense of humor you will be exploring: The ten-dollar founding father without a father Got a lot farther By being a lot smarter By working a lot harder.... One of the greatest opening numbers, "Little Shop of Horrors," invites you into Mr. Mushnik's shop, but it also (immediately) gives you a taste of the sassy, gay, extremely intelligent voice that makes Howard Ashman special: Shang-a-lang.... Feel the sturm und drang in the air! And Sondheim, writing about Victorian London, sends you back in time with deliberately archaic language. "Kept a shop in London Town." "A lavabo and a fancy chair." "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd." Sondheim knows how to be contrarian; although he is writi...

  On Halloween, we sat with the pediatric gastroenterologist, who asked us to describe a typical dirty diaper. "Sometimes," said my spouse, "it's a bit like mashed potatoes. But, too often, it's like gravy." Do you wonder why I'm depressed? I especially hate waiting rooms. There seems to be a sadistic trend where doctors put tantalizing objects in waiting rooms, then leave out signs that say, "KEEP YOUR CHILD AWAY." The most ridiculous example was an elaborate toy train set in the physiatry clinic. You stick that in front of a kid with ADHD--then expect that the kid will calmly fold his hands in his lap? I've met with a "life coach." The title itself makes my skin crawl. She was pleasant, but she used the following terms: "the whole work-life puzzle," "give oneself grace," and "positive psychology." In any case, this hour did not make me feel guilty--which is how I feel if I'm in sweatpants, watch...

  Billy Joel's great song seems to be about New York--but, really, it's about Billy Joel. A man has strayed from his love. He has been seduced by "the movie stars in their fancy cars and their limousines." He has yielded to an urge, a chance to "take a holiday from the neighborhood." But reality calls. Casanova is not this man's identity. He is returning to his "marriage," his New York state of mind. Oddly, Billy Joel does not put New York on a pedestal; it's not perfect, and it's not a wonderland. It's just an opportunity for "give and take, rhythm and blues." Also, the life Joel is leaving--an L.A. life--is not hell. In fact, that life was "so easy." We can't really explain our passions; Billy Joel needs to be in New York because he needs to be in New York. The emotional climax occurs toward the end, when he admits that his time in L.A. has been a mistake: "That's fine with me, cuz I've let it ...