Liars and Saints

Clearly, the Tony Awards will not be happening "on schedule" this year--if at all--so the NY Times ran a piece about Ben Brantley's "all-time greats." These were the live performances that shook Brantley to the core. The argument: A live performance really exists in a class of its own. A taped performance can't compare, because the electricity is missing; there is no longer a kind of dialogue between the performer and the audience. Brantley lists several great theatrical performances, and the ones I recall are Cherry Jones ("Glass Menagerie"), Christopher Plummer ("Barrymore"), and of course Jennifer Holliday ("Dreamgirls"). I didn't get to see any of those shows, but if I could have my own special, weird Tony Awards, where I hand out prizes to any stellar performer, from *any* year in my own personal past, the winners would be: *Bernadette Peters, over and over again. ("Hello Dolly," "A Little Night M...

My husband bought another Tushy. This is a device that somehow converts your toilet into a bidet. The device reroutes water from your sink--I think?--and shoots it up your butt. I say "another" Tushy, because the first Tushy we owned is now defunct. We had to abandon it when we moved from one house to another. Some people say the reason adults today are so messed-up is that certain beautiful bodily processes were once finessed as sources of shame. We're all weird about sex because our teachers tiptoed around that subject. We're weird about poop because, years ago, no one really talked about poop. So, in 2020, there are aggressive countermeasures: Now, kids get sex ed at very, very early ages, and you can find picture books with titles like "Who Pooped in the Park?" I'm all for candor, but I'm a hypocrite. I talk the talk, but I had a moment of deep embarrassment when I had to deal with the Tushy packaging. Recycling, in...

My old roommate, Tom Toro, became a cartoonist for "The New Yorker" after college. You can find his work online. I think my favorite of his cartoons has a cowboy approaching a Wild West saloon. Some barflies are watching. Bizarrely, the cowboy's feet are not visible underneath the doors--those weird half-doors that we tend to envision in Wild West saloons. So Barfly One draws the only logical conclusion: "THAT is one bow-legged cowboy." Think about it. I'm really enchanted by this silliness--I'd love to spend more time with that cowboy--and it's the same kind of silliness you can find in Toro's debut picture book, "How to Potty Train Your Porcupine." This is available now; it's a beautiful book. The story involves a family eager to adopt a porcupine. But you can't put a diaper on a porcupine; the quills will poke holes in the cloth. This is a particularly intellectual porcupine, so if you set out newspaper f...

Summer is around the corner, and here are the summer titles that have my interest: *"Gone at Midnight." Elisa Lam may have had mental health struggles; she checked into the Hotel Cecil, a notorious hotel for criminals (Richard Ramirez once stayed there) and went missing. Eventually, hotel guests complained of a foul smell, and it was discovered that "corpse water" had been trickling into various sinks. Lam had been dead and submerged in a water cistern for days and days. Suicide? Terrible accident? Murder? Well, sure, I will read about this case. *"Fire in Paradise." A major fire in California resulted in the deaths of over eighty people in a town, a town called "Paradise." Disaster stories tend to involve memorable character portraits--think of the brave pregnant woman in "Chernobyl"--and that's what I anticipate here. *"More than Love." Natalie Wood had three Oscar nominations before she was 25! She had thre...

A guy is falsely accused of having murdered his wife, and he goes on the run. A U.S. Marshal is assigned to the case; let's call him Tommy Lee Jones. The story runs on two tracks. Zone One: Our fugitive disguises his appearance and jumps over waterfalls and researches creepy one-armed men, in an effort to stay alive. (There is nothing inherently creepy about being one-armed; I'm just saying, in this particular movie, there is a group of suspects who happen to be *both* one-armed *and* creepy.) Zone Two: Tommy Lee Jones barks commands and fires guns and decodes mysterious recorded phone conversations, in an effort to find the fugitive. And that's all. That's the entirety of the story. When I was a kid, I felt particularly obsessed with the one-armed man, in the facts-blur-with-fiction style of childhood. "The Fugitive" came out in the early nineties, when I was especially captivated by big movies and big stories about death. (I also loved "Juras...

Last week, Joe Biden made a stupid remark, which is a tendency he has. He said, if you vote for Trump, "You ain't black." Yikes! This is the guy whose candidacy we have to support! Having noted that, I want to tip a hat to Wanda Sykes, who had the best, smartest response I'm aware of: Biden feels at home speaking to the Black community. He made a joke. Comedy ain’t easy, but he didn’t say 2 go shoot Clorox in our tits. Now, I wouldn’t make a blanket statement to say that voting for Trump means you’re not Black. I would say that it means you’re not smart. This is a brief work of genius, and the obvious highlight is: "2 go shoot Clorox in our tits." The numeral "2," and the specificity of "Clorox" and "tits," make me very happy. Also, in very few words, Sykes is making a complex, thoughtful argument--and, cherry on top: She is correct. So Wanda Sykes is my writer-hero of 2020. I recommend her Netflix special, ...

One of the great features of life in New York City is the American Songbook series. These are wildly overpriced concerts that happen at Columbus Circle; you wander through the little mall, with the J. Crew (once upon a time!) and the Williams Sonoma, and you take a secret (not really) elevator, up, up, up to a grand hall (the Appel Room). The concerts themselves are very short, so I think the crazy ticket prices are mainly related to the view you get from this one big room. An entire wall has been replaced by windows, so you gaze out at the southwestern corner of Central Park; you see cars trudging along Central Park South. And horses. At Christmas, lights are everywhere, and you feel you're looking down from a spaceship. Several American Songbook concerts are being televised, in these Covid days, and I want to give my recommendation: * Sutton Foster . Skip right to "Sunshine on My Shoulders," "Take Me to the World," and "It All Fades Away,...