Liars and Saints

 My son's worst behavior occurred over the summer. His teacher had disappeared--in her place, a twenty-year-old materialized. The classroom became chaotic, and my son expressed his distress by trying to poop in my backyard. There is a long history of autistic kids having an idiosyncratic relationship to poop. If you have a developmental delay, then your behavior around poop can resemble a toddler's behavior--and we all know what toddlers can do with their poop. Staring in horror through my kitchen window, I wondered which of my sins had led to this moment of cosmic retribution. *I do not read the school emails about the local kid-friendly production of "Cinderella" and the district-wide "move-a-thon." *I am withdrawn. I know that lowkey behavior around an impulsive kid is a good move--but I take this idea to the extremes. Being lowkey is different from being withdrawn. *I permit screenings of the Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" segments. These are n...

 Maurice Bailey was a man who tried to take a sailing trip with his wife. The trip went off course, and the two amateurs were stranded in the ocean (on a tiny raft) for many weeks. Bailey came home and published the story of the disaster--and sales went through the roof. Unfortunately, Bailey's *subsequent* voyage went very well--so the subsequent account (a *new* book) did not sell well. No one wants to read about a tediously successful voyage. I thought about Bailey while I made my way through "Notes on Being a Man," perhaps the worst book I've ever read. I planned to stop reading around page 80. But my hatred for the book was so strong, it pushed me forward. I felt an intense pleasure in my loathing for the writer, Scott Galloway. Do you know how, if you follow the political spectrum way, way far left, eventually the radical libertarians actually begin to seem like radical conservatives? My disdain for Galloway became so powerful, it began to resemble enjoyment. Re...

 I once knew a "child of suicide." This young man had not yet finished high school; however, his father had opted to jump ship. When we talk about suicide, we're not supposed to choose verbs that imply a sense of agency. Not "commit" suicide. Instead: "die by suicide." The idea is that you're in a burning room at the top of a skyscraper--and the options are sealing themselves off--and so, at a certain point, it would seem insane *not* to plunge to your death. In "Whalefall," Josh Brolin is troubled. One critic says the Brolin character suffers from "toxic masculinity," but there is nothing notably masculine about the Brolin character. It might be better to say that he is just toxic. Austin Abrams, Brolin's son, tries not to upset the sleeping dragon. But battles are inevitable. In one scene I like, Brolin has issued a sloppy half-invitation, and Abrams has replied with a sloppy half-deferral. The problem of non-communication...

  My world is Kelly Clarkson. Everything is Kelly Clarkson. To re-cap, Clarkson went into a store in Brooklyn and understood the vendor's tone to be snotty. She then posted on social media about the rudeness. But--being a celebrity--she unwittingly activated a mob of millions of people who subsequently attacked the Brooklyn store. And now the Brooklyn store is attempting to play the role of victim (and not the other way around). I love this story. We're not supposed to make assumptions--but I'm going to make assumptions. The Brooklyn vendor was, in fact, rude (and we can't tell in the video because the sound is off, obviously so much in life is about tone, intonation). Clarkson was also having an iffy day--and, having grown up in Fort Worth, she was feeling particularly impatient with the default semi-rudeness that you are likely to find at *more than one* tiny Brooklyn shop counter. Having grown up in Buffalo, I personally feel something like rage whenever a New York C...

Amy Bloom writes about Karen Pirie, Poirot, and Peter Wimsey, and these characters would be ideal "college essay" narrators: What all of these people have in common is curiosity and intelligence and an impressive, sometimes awkward, perseverance. Some of them are self-aware (to make any monster no longer a monster, give him or her some self-awareness), and some are not, and some pretend not to be, but we see that they know who they are or, at least, what they have done, in the quiet moments and the musing after the event, whether the event is homicidal or sexual. Many high-school seniors shy away from self-awareness in their essays; the writers believe that conceding a flaw would be an unappealing choice (when, in fact, it is a *very* appealing choice). Some people might wish for the perfect protagonist, but it’d be hard to get any of those people to agree on what the perfect protagonist should be. Do we all want beautiful or genius? Beauty or extreme handsomeness can be off-...

  My favorite music video is for the Whitney Houston "Higher Love" remix. A few things it does right: *It is pure sex. It would be difficult to imagine a hotter, more joyful music video. *It is not thuddingly literal. Too often, music video directors feel a need to underline each and every lyric. If there is a metaphor involving a sunrise, we see an actual sunrise. "Higher Love" avoids this trap. *It's a thoughtful tribute to Whitney. The costumes are an allusion to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody"--and we in fact see that video on a small TV screen for approximately three seconds. This feels appropriate--not sappy or overly reverent. A light touch. Five stars, no notes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR49dyo-y0E&list=RDJR49dyo-y0E&start_radio=1

 Yes, it's a bad movie. But it's not terrible. In a way, it *profits* from the negative reviews--you see the film and anticipate a trainwreck. And it's just a car wreck, so you're pleasantly surprised. A grand tradition of storytelling involves children attempting to piece together the truth from various fragments that adults provide. The main text is Henry James's "What Maisie Knew" (with a strong film adaptation featuring Julianne Moore). You also have the Culkin character in "You Can Count on Me." You have Maile Meloy's excellent story "Red From Green." Mona Simpson's "Casebook" belongs in this discussion. Plus Jesse Eisenberg's galvanizing performance in "The Squid and the Whale." "Other Mommy" features a little girl--a young actor asked to do a bit too much. As others have noted, it's hard to spend so much time with a child actor when you know Jessica Chastain and Arian Moayed are in th...