Liars and Saints

 In the abstract, a hospital is like Oz, a well-run world unto itself, a place where great things, great acts of healing, can occur. But, if you live for a few weeks in a hospital, then you see the man behind the curtain. In my car, I have a thermos that says: "Gundersen Hospital, Keep Calm and Mom On." It doesn't matter that I'm not a mom, and moms are absent from my home. No one at Gundersen really wrestled with the idea of "alternative families," and the harried twentysomething who shoved the thermos at me must have thought: "Free shit. Of course they'll accept it." (This conclusion was accurate!) Toward the end of my stay, I was asked to watch a series of educational videos, so that I would not (a) shake my baby to death, (b) ignore signs of choking, or (c) drive my child around with her body unbuckled, dangling from the passenger-side window of the car. These videos were like bad pornography. An actor--without affect--would murmur, "O...

  Tipping my hat to Marcia Brown, a gay woman who was born not far from where I was born. Brown became the first person in history to win three Caldecott Medals. (To this day, only one other person has earned that distinction, David Wiesner.) My love for Marcia Brown has to do with her classic re-telling of "Cinderella." This is a tale without true monsters; the stepsisters can be awful, but they're not on par with Snow White's evil queen. (Brown makes them silly and pitiable, like eccentric aunts in a Jane Austen novel.) The most interesting thing about Cinderella is that she forgives, she shows mercy. After she marries, she invites the stepsisters to live with her in the royal palace, and she finds them positions within society. Kindness is "lending someone your strength"; Cinderella seems to have written the book on kindness. I'm moved by the Prince kneeling before the maiden, and by the stepsisters accepting a gift of peaches at the royal ball. Brown...

 On Thursdays, I can drop the kids with the nanny and take myself to a movie. The last two Thursdays, the movies have been so bad, I've eagerly awaited the inevitable phone call that has disrupted the story. "Escape Room II" didn't even attempt to include characters--the experience was like watching someone else play "Tetris" for two hours--so I was delighted when the officious washer/dryer repairman called. "You say it's the spin cycle at fault and it's really the heater? That's like saying  Repair the wheels of my car  when it's really the radio that is busted......" Last week, I chose "Black Widow." I had hoped to gouge out my eyes before viewing another Marvel film, but it's slim pickings here in Jersey. I briefly nodded off after four minutes, thus missing crucial exposition about alien Soviet drone/starlets, and then I was lost for the next two hours. This time, my call came from my husband, so I assumed my baby ...

  "Perversion of Justice" feels like a spiritual sequel to "Empire of Pain"; both books are big right now, and both are about powerful monsters pulling strings to remain out of the spotlight. "Perversion of Justice" is the weaker book because--as the Times has observed--Julie K. Brown doesn't really have a full story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein used wealthy contacts to get out of an appropriate punishment for his crimes; we know that one engineer of Epstein's scam, Acosta, later became labor secretary. (We know that Julie Brown's reporting then led to Acosta's resignation. "I'd like to step down because my involvement in a case many years ago is now unjustly stealing attention from President Trump's wonderful economic news.....") We don't know: what Trump did with Epstein. Or what Bill Clinton did with Epstein. Or what Alan Dershowitz did. We don't know exactly why Acosta behaved the way he behaved; we don't ...

  One issue I had with "Friday Night Lights" was that characters were always "popping in." If you needed to chat with Coach, you would just drive up to his front door. Seeking advice about a possible abortion? Surprise Tami Taylor in her kitchen, even though you've literally never been in this kitchen before. (Workplace dramas--"The Good Fight," "SVU"--do not need to invent reasons for characters to be in one room together. If you work with someone, you see that person constantly, perhaps more than you see your spouse.) One thing I admire in "The White Lotus" is that Mike White invents plausible reasons for plots to intersect (without using a workplace). I personally resist the temptation to speak to other hotel guests when I'm on a vacation, and yet I can believe that White's characters might fraternize at a bar, on a boat, by the pool. This week's wonderful Lacy/Daddario story has Daddario wondering if Lacy is just in ...

  "Cape Feare" is among the more famous "Simpsons" episodes. I had thought Kelsey Grammer won an Emmy for this half-hour, but I was wrong. Grammer did win for playing Sideshow Bob--but in a later season. A stranger comes to town. Bart begins receiving menacing letters, written in blood: "Die Bart Die," "I Will Kill You." (Homer admits to having written one of the letters; he is angry that his son has mocked him. Bart has tattooed "Wide Load" on Homer's butt cheeks.) When Bart realizes his real nemesis is Sideshow Bob, a homicidal maniac, the race is on. The humor comes from how un-subtle Bob is; for example, Bob drives through the streets of Springfield, shouting out the names of people he does *not* intend to kill, and Bart is conspicuously absent from the list. (Maybe we're mocking Scorsese here? One thing you think, when you watch Scorsese's "Cape Fear," is that Nick Nolte perhaps drags his heels a *bit* before ...

  Friday night in this house was EPIC. We watched "The Good Fight," but we had to pause the opening credit montage, because the exploding purses made our son upset. Then: get this twist. I had a thought that it might be fun to revisit the early-eighties Meryl Streep drama "Silkwood." We were so pumped! Another twist: "Silkwood"  is not available via streaming. Just when I thought the night couldn't get crazier, my spouse suggested "Mamma Mia." What happens in Maplewood stays in Maplewood..... We were hoping to leave the house at least once in the next 72 hours, but our various half-hearted drink-with-us texts had been rebuffed. We did manage to score a last-minute invite to the birthday party for a neighboring two-year-old. My husband said, "Clearly, we're not in the top tier of guests." And I shrugged. I'm not proud. On the screen, Meryl was wrapped in a forty-foot cape, and she was swanning around a yacht, singing, "M...