Liars and Saints

 My son has chosen the holiday season as a time to lose his mind. Recently, alone in his crib, he performed a Gypsy Rose strip tease, threw his pants across the room, then crawled out of his diaper. He then "painted" with a small bit of poop; later, I found that the crib-sheet had a new, intriguing, abstract design. At other moments, Joshie has found his sister's pacifier, and he has half-inserted the end into his mouth. This makes me think of certain tired, seedy Santas -- the ones who can't fully commit to their costume. (You see the tee shirt peaking out from under the red suit.) Another new interest of Joshie's is the laundry hamper; he pushes it through the house, sometimes for over an hour, while loudly calling, SIGH! SIGH! SIGH! SIGH! I'm glad to see that he is generally having a good time. We're reading: *"The Polar Express." I still think Mr. Claus is a self-righteous pill, in this book, but I admire the train and the city lights. *...

 The best thing I saw this weekend was actually a rewatch -- "911," from "Law and Order: SVU." This is generally exalted among SVU fans; it's the hour that won Mariska Hargitay her Emmy. We see Mariska/Olivia in a kind of gown, getting ready for a night out. But SVU receives a call. A distraught Honduran girl says she is a victim of kidnapping. The phone she is on seems to send signals from areas all over New York City, so skeptics begin to believe she is involved in a hoax. But Olivia listens to her gut -- and remains on the line. Eventually, a tiny detail in a photo sets off fireworks. The little girl said she gets her food from "Felipe's Burgers," which burned down long ago. What if she isn't lying? What if the captor brings her water in an old "Felipe's Burgers" mug -- but the actual burgers arrive from elsewhere? And what if the captor bought the mug from the once-extant Felipe's simply because the captor lived, or lives,...

 Just a short note of gratitude for the life and career of Stephen Sondheim, who changed so many lives. Sondheim apparently had crummy parents, but he credited his mentor, Hammerstein, with being a "surrogate dad." He said he wrote because Hammerstein had written. "If Hammerstein had been a geologist, I would have done that, too." At seventy, Sondheim spoke with Frank Rich for the Times and he said he had opted never to grow up. He was just playing. He was thoughtful about the actual process of work: Keep alcohol nearby, and use a soft pencil. If the pencil is soft, you have to stop working every few minutes, and it's always a treat to stop working. Additionally: Try to work only when you're supine. I also liked what he said when James Lapine complained about missed deadlines. "Do you want the song Tuesday -- or do you want it good?" And about the dead: "I'm baffled when people say don't speak ill of the dead! Of course you should! The...

 James Marshall, a gay man, might have had an unhealthy relationship with food. We see George the hippo dumping soup in his loafers; we see George enjoying too many cookies. An actual series -- the "Yummers" books -- revolves around a pig who can't control her appetite. The closest Marshall came to a depiction of a normal meal is in "The Stupids Step Out," I think. Here, the Stupids, tired from a full day, enjoy a feast at a diner. The main course is mashed potatoes drenched in butterscotch syrup. After the meal, the Stupids walk home on their hands, don clown costumes, and climb into bed, with their feet resting on the pillows. (Their heads dangle from the other end of the mattress.) And there is a brief moment of thanksgiving. Mrs. Stupid says, to her husband, "Thank you for the lovely day, dear. It certainly has been fun." This is Harry Allard's writing, allegedly, but Marshall had a heavy hand in the editing process. (And Marshall invented the ...

 The NYTimes just published its 100 best books of 2021; I'm generally not in sync with the Times book critics, so here are the titles I'd add to that list...... Fiction "Early Morning Riser" (Heiny) "The Dark Hours" (Connelly) "1979" (McDermid) "Lightning Strike" (Krueger) "Morningside Heights" (Henkin) Non-fiction "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story" (Brown) "What about the Baby" (McDermott) "What Happened to Paula" (Dykstra) "Baggage" (Cumming) "Dusk Night Dawn" (Lamott) I haven't read Ann Patchett's new essays yet (the book was just released today) -- but I have a good feeling about that endeavor. "A great writer riffs on family, marriage, work" -- This is usually a winning formula for me. Just some thoughts. P.S. I loved that James Lapine made the cut! His oral history of "Sunday in the Park" was a surprise and a delight.

 Janet Malcolm titled her last book "Nobody's Looking at You," and this could also have worked as a substitute title for Stephen Sondheim's "Company." "Company" is about (among other things) the fact that "nobody's looking at you"; we're all staring, and staring, at ourselves, and in the fog of self-observation, moments of real connection are a miraculous thing. A woman in her mid-thirties, Bobbie, visits a set of married friends. One has abandoned alcohol; the other isn't touching chocolate. Except that the teetotaler has a flask in one hand. And the dieting spouse keeps a set of brownies next to her chair. Bobbie leaves and visits a former flame, who seems shy. "I always wanted to marry you," he says, "but I was afraid to ask." Bobbie believes this is a form of flirtation, so she plays along. "I wanted to marry you, too! Imagine that!" And the guy says: "Anyway, I met someone, and we're...

 I think Thanksgiving weekend is a great time to be immobile; this year, I can even mention my two tiny children as an excuse for remaining in the house day after day -- after day after day. A monastic Thanksgiving means that you need many pulpy novels (and a few twisty TV shows). In the novel category, I have a few works by Alafair Burke and by Kathleen Kent -- and, in the TV category, I'm considering "Prodigal Son" and "Only Murders in the Building." Back to Alafair Burke...Ms. Burke came to my attention through Laura Lippman and Michael Connelly. Burke's break-out novel, "The Ex," has Penn Station falling prey to a horrible massacre sometime after 9/11. The gunman is a kid -- and it seems that his single dad allowed him to read far-right garbage and to collect ammunition for many years. A big twist: Someone then murders the father of the gunman. Because a Penn Station spouse -- someone who lost a wife in the massacre -- happens to be caught in f...