Liars and Saints

 Taylor Swift is in the news, so let's celebrate "Trouble" from the album "Red." This song is so ubiquitous, it's easy to imagine that it just grew up out of the soil like a blade of grass. But in fact it's the end result of some smart calculations. Once upon a time-- A few mistakes ago-- I was in your sights-- You got me alone. Like a memoir writer, Taylor immediately establishes that this story involves twins: "Taylor Then" and "Taylor Now." Taylor Now will empathize with but also lightly mock Taylor Then: The sense of ambivalence creates tension, and it also creates humor. By opening with fairy-tale lingo, Taylor Now is making fun of her own wide-eyed reputation. And it's a nice touch to measure time in "mistakes." I guess you didn't care-- And I guess I liked that. And when I fell hard-- You took a step back-- Without me. And he's long gone When he's next to me. And I realize The blame is on me. Taylor is...

 No one looks good in this book (except for Robert Hur). Hur left his job to do the Biden investigation. He was respectful; he tried to stick to the facts. Biden was evasive, unintelligible, lost. Hur correctly summarized his findings; he had to describe Biden's appearance and age to make the case that a jury likely would not find Biden guilty (though Biden himself acknowledged his guilt several times in taped interviews). After the Hur fracas, Biden claimed to feel outrage that Hur had brought up the subject of Beau. Whether consciously or not (always a tough question with septuagenarian Biden), the President was lying. It wasn't Hur who brought up Beau; it was Biden himself who brought up Beau. Kamala Harris assisted in Biden's bad behavior by attacking Hur's professionalism. (It's hard to believe that Harris was not aware that she was lying during this attack.) It's difficult to spend so much time with terrible people. The writers' disdain for Hunter Bide...

 Sometimes, I consider purchasing Shirley Jackson's memoir, "Raising Demons"; it's a light, comic memoir about motherhood. But then I recall that Jackson had intense anxiety, periods of prescription drug abuse, agoraphobia, and colitis. With its insistent lightness, the memoir seems potentially dishonest to me. So I don't make the purchase. I'm locked in a silent war with the town busybody. Her name is Rhea, and she runs the Maplewood Moms; we've never met. I loathe her; she reminds me so much of myself. Her favorite move is to write a faux-ingenuous post on Facebook that just happens to make several people feel bad about themselves. Recently, Rhea felt upset because some folks in the town were looking for free tickets to the new Beyonce concert, "Cowboy Carter." And some other people were trying to *resell* their unwanted tickets, rather than simply offering them for free to the Beyonce-loving needy. And Rhea took it upon herself to intercede on...

  Fina Strazza is up for a Tony; she will not win. But it makes sense that she earned the recognition. The standard line is that nominations are really for characters; they're not for performances. Beth, in "John Proctor," takes a big Tony-friendly journey. (Also, it helps that Strazza's work is excellent.) When we meet Beth, we recognize a type: She is academically ambitious but socially stilted. She has deep thoughts about the feminist gestures in Lizzo's career ("I made worksheets!"), but she can't stay calm and civil during a low-stakes argument. In one of her finest moments, she is asked if she would like to have sex with Harry Styles, and she begins giggling uncontrollably. (The giggling is utterly plausible; for the unfeigned convulsion, and for that alone, Strazza already deserves a Tony Award.) In the span of a thirty-second chuckle-fit, Beth begins to grow up; she is half-acknowledging that she has desires and she is complicated. The "...

 For a long while, Anthony Horowitz has worked with the actor Lesley Manville. When Manville recently said, "I want another project," the wish caused Horowitz to grab a pen. He realized he had an idea. The character Horowitz has constructed--Susan Ryeland--is unusual in crime fiction. She is past fifty, romantically unattached, only semi-employed. She is in no way "defeated." She has a spirit of optimism and adventure; without becoming cloying, Horowitz shows that Ryeland is an admirable, enterprising person who just happens not to resemble Harry Bosch, John Rebus, Guido Brunetti, Adam Dalgliesh, or Armand Gamache. Ryeland's calling is not to solve murders; it is to edit books. But we can happily suspend disbelief. In Ryeland's world, publishing is an activity that is inextricably linked with killing. The bodies keep piling up. I don't think that Horowitz has written his new novel as a response to the Alice Munro saga--the revelations seem too recent--bu...

  As a party hostess, I'm pretty shitty. I know this. I can't be bothered with Paperless Post. Also, envisioning a playdate for my daughter and friends, I become ill at the thought of board games. I see the pieces--in my mind's eye. They're scattered on the lawn, they're floating in a puddle, they're sunken within the innards of my yellow lab. I Google "toddler playdate," and the easiest option seems to be filling a roasting pan with water, then sticking it on the floor. You flood the pan with cups, sifters, spoons, bowls, plastic tumblers. Stick the kids in front of the tumblers.....Fun for hours. My main transgression seems to involve "Elsa yogurt." If you order this yogurt online, three of the six cups will feature Elsa. (The others, featuring Olaf, will be hated, rejected.) I think I'm scoring points by offering Elsa yogurt to my daughter's guest--but the neighbor mom throws silent daggers at my chest. "Thanks," she says...

 Some aspects of "Wine and Roses" haven't aged well. The opening credits are cheesy; the Jack Klugman performance is over the top. The reverential treatment of AA feels slightly silly (although I understand it must have been bold to stage a fictional AA meeting in the early 1960s). But none of this really matters, because of Jack Lemmon. He plays Joe Clay, a man at war with himself. Joe is paid to recruit young women to make appearances at cocktail parties; this is part of a business enterprise. The women must wear sequins and deep "V" necks. Disgusted with his own life, Joe distracts himself by wooing a young person, Kirsten; he makes it his project to introduce her to alcohol. (She likes Toblerone, so he gives her a chocolate martini.) Years later, in a codependent, vodka-drenched marriage, Joe tries to save himself. The moments of relapse are almost sickening. The experience of watching the film becomes something like standing near a slow-motion car wreck. Le...

 The idea of a witch is double-edged. In the film "The Wizard of Oz," Margaret Hamilton seems crazed and greedy--imprisoning Dorothy just because of a fight over a pair of footwear. By contrast, the musical "Wicked" gives Margaret Hamilton an emotional life; we understand the sisterly bond that MH is mourning. We have seen Nessarose; we have seen the two young women helping and coaching each other. So we have a firmer grasp on motivations. "Hacks" plays with the "witch" concept in entertaining ways. Jimmy believes that Ava is living in a constant state of white-hot rage, such that any knife on any lunch table could quickly become "a weapon." In fact, Jimmy is utterly wrong. (It's unsettling to notice how little Jimmy matters to Ava--and I wonder if we'll return to this issue at the end of the season.) A second "witch" is Madam Mayor, who has been caught in an orgy on a Vegas zamboni. The writers correctly observe that ...

 My friend is so good at lying to her children, I'm not even sure she knows she is doing it. When her youngest requests a trip to the toy store, she does not miss a beat. "Closed today!" she says. Her tone has the sing-song confidence of a true professional. "The toy people close on Mondays. Some other time!" Can this be accurate? I've never heard that our local toy store shuts down on Mondays. I try to adopt my friend's tone when I torpedo a beach trip. It's just too cold outside. "Guys," I say to my kids, "the mayor has walled off the beach today. There was a toxic dump. We'll need to go next week." I'm not sure how I have failed--but I have failed. My son begins screaming. My daughter has been dreaming of throwing a wad of grass into the ocean--God knows why--and her tears begin to flow, and flow, and flow. We head to the beach; the consolation prize is that I can listen to a new podcast about JonBenet Ramsey. The fathe...

 Jeffrey Seller, the producer of "Rent," has written a memoir; he bluntly identifies one of the problems in the show. The big song Roger works hard at--"Your Eyes"--is a bad piece of writing. Seller confesses that--after Larson's death--the producers were still worrying about how trite this particular song is. One producer joked, "It turns out that Roger is just a weak writer. The End!" I agree that "Your Eyes" doesn't work--but I'd argue that the entire sequence also fails. "Rent" has a structural flaw. There are two stars, not one; the stars are the actors playing Roger and Mimi. When Daphne Rubin-Vega earned her Tony nomination, she was up for "Best Actress," not "Best Featured Actress." For this reason, she needs to be featured in the 11:00 number. Instead, she is half-dead while Roger sings the words of a Hallmark card into her ear. Roger and Mimi need a duet, like "Till There Was You" from...

  I'm a fan of "Big Enough," an early birthday present for my daughter. (Susie herself says she is unimpressed, and that she is waiting for the *real* present, which will be some kind of disposable Elsa trinket from Disney's "Frozen." But I notice that she listens to the story of "Big Enough.") A little boy, Ah-Fu, lives in rural China. His parents inform him that he is "big enough" to fetch the ox from the woods and lead him back home. But the parents' anxiety seeps out: "Just be sure you don't ride on his back, because he might knock you off." Excited and scared, Ah-Fu sets out on his mission. A bullfrog adds commentary: "Don't lead him by the horns. He might try to ram you in the butt." Birds, in a flock, share advice: "Don't push from behind. The ox might kick you." The ox himself has thoughts. He is consumed with fears; he can't walk alone across a stream, because he needs a guiding h...

 Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park" taught me a few things about painting. "Color and light" -- these can be major subjects, or even *the* subjects, of a work of art. The light can be more important than the faces or the hands. "Why should I paint like you or like anyone else?" The job of the artist is to absorb the world and shine out whatever he or she has taken in. The work of art isn't an attempt to document facts. It is half-world/half-artist -- you can't disentangle the subject from the person who has observed and recorded that subject. "Mademoiselles, I and my friend, we are but soldiers..." The artist melds with his subjects -- becomes a ventriloquist -- before he is able to make something truthful and new. Beyond La Grande Jatte, the Art Institute of Chicago had two great features last week: a Frida Kahlo self-portrait and a doodle by Jean Cocteau. The Kahlo made me think of Nan Goldin bravely confronting her own scars -- showin...

 With "The Birds," Hitchcock stepped outside of his comfort zone; he made a slightly supernatural movie. Swarms of birds gather and attack mild-mannered humans. No explanation is offered. The birds cause fires, scratch at eyes, and torment children in a schoolyard.  The current blockbuster, "Final Destination: Bloodlines," made me think of Hitchcock's unusual late-phase work. Mid-century, a young woman visits a newly opened "Space Needle" stand-in. She has a premonition that many people in the building will die, so she manages to save several of them. (That's not to say that death *doesn't* occur. A glass floor caves in. A piano falls on a malevolent child. A gown is engulfed in flames.) Having cheated death, the woman realizes she is in trouble. Death, or DEATH, is now angry. DEATH will hunt down each of its intended victims in creative ways; if the Space Needle didn't work, then a train accident will have to suffice. A beheading will have...

  "Hacks" owes a debt to "Mad Men," a series focused on a non-romantic relationship between a young person and her insensitive boss. In "Mad Men," we occasionally have access to the domestic lives of Don and Peggy, but the show really takes off when the workplace friction is front and center (as it is in "The Suitcase"). To me, DV is an echo of Don Draper. DV's daughter calls to talk about her pregnancy, and when DV blithely announces that she cannot assist, the daughter laughs. "I'm not interested in your assistance. I want you to send your housekeeper." At the same time, Ava is so consumed with work that she cannot "emotionally invest" in her polyamorous arrangement. "It seems like you want us just for sex....so we're closing the circle....We're asking you to step out of the circle." "Hacks" recently had a fun "revision" of a standard "Mad Men" moment: Don demands a ...

  I'm swelling with pride because I have dragged myself to the doctor for a check-up; this is kind of a moral victory for me; it happens once per decade. He asks about my exercise routine--and I answer in an ashamed way. "It's ten minutes per morning on a stationary bike." (Actually, it's five to seven minutes. I have to get through three songs--and if I choose short songs like the little snippets from Broadway's "& Juliet," then I can be done in approximately 200 seconds.) The doctor maintains a poker face. "Daily exercise is great. Let's try to get your number to twenty minutes per morning." I found this doctor through my husband. As usual, Marc was accurate in his description: "I think this guy might be a serial killer." The doctor is extremely meek, like a nerdier version of Michael C. Hall in "Dexter." It would be impossible to demonstrate *less* personality than what the doctor is offering. He wears Seymour...

 "The Vulnerables" is an extraordinary novel about a woman at war with herself. The woman--Sigrid Nunez--is living alone through COVID in New York City. There are reasons for despair. Nunez recalls a quote from Stephen Hawking in 2017: "Humanity has 100 years left on this planet."  Nunez takes long walks through the semi-abandoned city, and one day, a stranger in a balaclava parks his bike in front of her. He pulls up the mask and coughs in her face; he rides away. On another day, Nunez visits a coffee shop she loves and chats with the barista who ranks at the top of her "favorites" list. She absentmindedly rests her hand on the counter, and the barista--enraged by the life of an "essential worker"--snaps at her. This takes her breath away. On still another occasion, she opens hate mail from a stranger who has read her first book, "A Feather on the Breath of God." The stranger has concluded (1) the novel is not a novel but a memoir, (2)...

 I'm not done with "Next to Normal," but I have some disjointed thoughts: *This century saw the birth of the Sad White Person Musical. I'm thinking of "Spring Awakening," "N2N," "Dear Evan Hansen." (I haven't seen the Alanis Morissette musical, but I have a feeling it might fit.) The Sad White Person Musical has a few standard elements: a suicide attempt (either successful or not), a fractured white family, a pop-inflected score, and a candid discussion about mental illness. *Watching the Broadway version of "N2N," it was difficult not to conclude that Alice Ripley herself was unhinged. Not just Diana the character, but also Ripley the performer. Ripley's vocal damage became a part of her myth: She was so committed, she wasn't taking care of herself. Though Caissie Levy gives a strong performance (and one that must exhaust her), she has a level of control that becomes somewhat distracting. It's hard to believe th...

  My neighbor's father is visiting. He is upset. "I brought the dog here to the bus-stop," he says. "This dog never, never shits on the 2:30 walk. So I didn't bring poop bags? But he pooped. He pooped in the middle of the sidewalk." This man looks at me with intense pain; I feel I can see into his soul. "I mean," he says, "never, never. There has never been a 2:30 poop." He addresses the dog, as if putting the dog on trial: "Not once, before today." It's like the words themselves might sprout legs and stand up--might walk back to the mound of poop and scoop it into a (non-existent) poop bag. I understand my old buddy's pain, especially because this is a litigious town. Recently, a Facebook ranter complained that the locals are allowing their dogs to walk on various lawns. "Why is this permissible? Would you let your *child* walk through another resident's lawn?" (I was certain I had committed both of the af...

  My favorite essay is by Katherine Heiny; it's a love story in disguise. Its star is Katherine, who joins a suicide prevention team (because she herself is lonely and bored). Katherine is delighted when one of the "regulars" (a woman who abuses the phone line) chooses to send eclairs; other volunteers think the pastries may be poisoned, but Katherine feels that they are delicious, "especially as they grow slightly stale."  Taped for a news segment, Katherine accidentally fields a call from a friend, whose husband (a volunteer) has left his lunch at home. Nervous about the cameras, Katherine pretends that she is talking someone down from suicide. "How do you feel about your situation? No matter how intense the pain is, know that you will not always feel this way...." In my favorite scene, Katherine attends an AA meeting. (A brief study of AA is a requirement of suicide prevention training.) Slowly, Katherine sees that she recognizes most of the people ...

  Many TV shows use a procedural case-of-the-week structure: "The Good Wife," "SVU," "Justified," "Evil," "The Good Fight," "Elsbeth." Often, there is a series-long story that runs alongside the procedural format. With "The Good Wife," in any given week, we may be wondering if Julianna Margulies will defeat Michael J. Fox. But the *big* question--the question that eats up approximately four years--is whether or not JM will end up with Josh Charles. "Hacks," like "The Good Wife," has one big question: the will-they-or-won't-they of Ava and DV. And there is also a procedural element; though the women aren't solving mysteries, they *are* tackling one problem per week. How do I organize a writers' room? How do I stage a first show? How do I respond to a focus group? I enjoyed "Clickable Face." There is a fundamental disagreement. Ava wants to aim for a Peabody Award; DV wants dol...

 The weekends make me want to ingest cyanide and die. We are invited to an "astronaut birthday party." We like the parents, but they have crammed around ninety families into their small house; the chaos is overwhelming. My daughter asks for several slices of cheese; she immediately tips her plate, so that the cheese lands on the floor. This is so fucking irritating. If I were alone, I might say, "Go ahead and have the cheese. The germs will help you to build up immunity." But, here, in public, I have to perform a certain kind of "motherly concern" dance. If I were better at my job, I would require my daughter to sit on my lap as she eats the cheese; we would be at a proper table. Forget that. My daughter demands crackers, and *after* I have contaminated six with my own paws, she announces that the crackers I have selected are squares, which are unacceptable. She wants the circles. Is it OK to admit that this very briefly fills me with near-homicidal rage? ...

 We're getting two Caissie Levy projects: "Ragtime" and a PBS taping of "Next to Normal." I'm on the record with my "Ragtime" reservations: The show is one big, generic ballad after another, and the writers haven't taken time to think deeply about the various traumatic events they faux-describe--in a breathless way--over three long, long hours. It's also disturbing to see a white family "rescuing" a Black orphaned kid; this ending isn't given the weight that it requires. The most recent "Ragtime" cast actually highlighted this problem in a talkback (and yet we're all awaiting another remounting of the show). One thing I'll say for "Ragtime." Lynn Ahrens always puts the stress on the right syllable. "We can NE-ver go BACK to before." Proper scansion is a lost art. Ahrens has respect for syllables. You can't make the same claim about "Next to Normal." Diana describes "the ...

 What was wrong with James Gandolfini?  He would refuse to show up to the set; people who had prepared for work were left out in the cold. Once, the person in question was Susan Sarandon. Gandolfini also mistreated a cancer-stricken Edie Falco.  On another occasion, Gandolfini's colleagues staged an intervention. When Gandolfini turned up, he saw the room and said, "Fuck you all." Then, recognizing his own power, he smirked at a producer and said, "Go ahead and fire me." He left. Acting with Annabella Sciorra, he had a scene where he was required to pick up a human body and throw it across a room. It seems possible to "phone this in" -- to reproduce the choreography without deep thought. Just do it and move on. But Gandolfini had a tantrum because the scene required "dark internal calculations"; he put himself first, wringing his hands, while others waited and waited. And yet, by contrast, on another occasion, Gandolfini acknowledged to a col...

  To be married to me is to endure a lengthy, lengthy discussion about the Tony Awards. Mid-meeting, my spouse receives seven text messages from me. "Snubbed: Gyllenhaal, Sutton Foster." "'Gypsy' gets nods for all of its three stars." "No nom for the   Outlaw   coroner." "Denzel overlooked." "No Michael McKean." "No Culkin." "No Idina." There is domestic tension here, because my husband has thrown his weight behind Nicole Scherzinger, while I'm rooting for Jennifer Simard. In this difficult time, it's useful to dwell on frivolous questions. My daughter and I watch a Patti LuPone interview, where she (Patti) makes insightful comments: "Many productions are bad, but a good production has a star who lets you know she is in control. A good production is a celebration of talent. It lifts you up out of your seat; it rearranges your atoms." She goes on to say, "The newest  Sweeney  wasn't ...

  The highpoint of "The Accountant 2" occurs at a Country Western bar; a young woman wants to flirt with Ben Affleck's quirky protagonist, Christian. "What's your favorite song?" Christian quickly answers, "Appalachian Spring, by Copland." Having recovered from her confusion, the woman asks, "How about a second choice?" "Enter Sandman, by Metallica." "They can't do that one." "Perhaps you could tell me more about the band's limitations...." Christian's brother Braxton later tries to offer post-game analysis. "You could always just say,  I don't know.....why don't *you* pick ?" And Christian scratches his head. "She asked me for my favorite song.....Naming a song was the task I had to perform...." Like many others, I tend to choose a film only if I know it features a psychopath. The Norman Bates in "Accountant 2" is Anais, who has a condition called "acqui...

 I was introduced to "Some People" via Bernadette Peters on VHS. Sondheim claimed not to write autobiographical material--but I think this was disingenuous. Sondheim himself said, "I never grew up," and his portrait of Rose--a creative force pushing against misogyny and ageism--is a portrait of someone who never grows up. Notice how easily Sondheim slips into the lingo of the 1920s. "That's peachy for some people--of one hundred and five." "Get an agent--and in jig time--you'll be being booked in the big time." "Good riddance to all the socials I had to go to--all the lodges I had to play...." Rose's ranting syntax makes her desperation palpable. In the song's famous bridge--with wonderful detail--she spells out exactly what she wants. There I was in Mr. Orpheum's office... And he was saying to me...Rose... Get yourself some new orchestrations... New routines and RED VELVET CURTAINS. Get a feathered hat for the baby-...

  At music class, I can't help but hear Sondheim's "Ladies Who Lunch" in my head: Here's to the girls who play wife-- Aren't they too much? Keeping house but clutching a copy of LIFE... Just to stay in touch. The ones who follow the rules-- And meet themselves at the schools-- Too busy to know that they're fools! Aren't they a gem??? At the end of the ten-week course, the teacher announces that you can "reup" for another season, and this seems like the wrong move. It seems to me, if you've done ten weeks, you should get a yearlong break (until you forget how tedious the program is, and you then sign up in a burst of cheerful optimism). But, amazingly, there is one mom who seems extremely excited to reup. Also, she is on time for each class, and she never seems to be in a medicated haze; in other words, she actually seems to be listening. I try not to think about why karate draws enough funding to support its own studio, but music class ha...