Liars and Saints

  This movie was intensely interesting to me, because Dan Savage is an actual writer, and because there were a few small subversive moments in the middle. Savage has written a great deal about marriage and sex. It's been years since I read his two excellent memoirs--"The Commitment" and "The Kid"--but, as I recall, Dan and his husband Terry have a fairly open arrangement, and Dan has been candid about the various complications. (It's clear that Dan doesn't think an open marriage is *more* complicated than a conventional marriage; I think he'd say that all arrangements are complicated, and why not go ahead and look at the difficult parts?) In "Spoiler Alert," Savage is writing about someone's "look, but don't touch" agreement. This agreement doesn't work. One partner is fairly certain the other is "touching"--on top of "looking"--and, in fact, the suspicions are valid. Savage has a soapbox moment whe...

How to see a job through to completion. Dear Baby: A friend of ours is entering the first grade. He hates it. He has a hard time leaving his mom everyday. I understand. I don't love going to work. At best, it's mildly diverting. Most of the time: It's dull. But I've collected some thoughts on work, and these thoughts have helped me for years, and here they are: * Sometimes, you just have to do the tap-dance. I assisted a second-grade teacher who did not believe that learning needed to be a continual source of amazement. This second-grade teacher would look a kid straight in the eye and say: "Occasionally, life requires you to learn and perform a tap-dance, whether you want that or not. Just do the tap-dance." Truer words man never speak. * It's important to bribe yourself. Entire tomes have been written about the importance of "intrinsic motivation." Earnest tomes--with PhDs in the offing. When this is the case, you know the movement ...