1) Huge. I am just. So. In. Love. It could not be clearer that the writers have respect, compassion, and, well, love for every character they create. Which means despite whatever conflicts crop up, all very realistically portrayed and involving less-than-ideal behavior on the parts of the characters, the feeling I have after every episode is, well, love. I WANT TO HUG ALL OF THEM. Please let me hug these fictional people!

2) Autism: The Musical. A bit homegrown in terms of composition/production, but it doesn’t matter. The content is all there—a group of autistic kids working with a dynamic adviser/director to produce a musical while their supportive, exhausted, and worried parents attempt to see them through. Sigh. I wept my way through. It’s sad. Sad and happy, but lots of sad.

3) MilkMilkLemonade. When I heard that this play featured a gay 5th grader living on a farm whose best friend is a talking chicken, my path was clear. Opening night! We were there! And it did not disappoint, from its dance-number interludes to its probing, unflinching look at the relationship between the main character and the bully from down the road. (Excruciating—and then, not.)

About a third of the way in, there’s a scene in which the two boys play house which sort of blows the top off the play, structurally, thematically, spiritually—it makes the play so much bigger than it had been. That is the scene that won me over, and that is the scene that I would most like to see again. (In other news, the directing and acting are fantastic.)

4) A Visit from the Goon Squad. Can someone explain Jennifer Egan to me? As in, any fans out there want to tell me what I’m missing? Most of what I’ve read by her feels superficial, and this book is no exception. Plus, as loyal readers know, I am not a fan of the multi-narrative. (If you’re going to write a novel, write a novel; if you want to write a book of short stories, write a book of short stories.) I’ve actually given up only part-way through, so if this is a mistake, please let me know.

5) Letters to Sam. I was a little worried that this was another Tuesdays with Morrie, which was too pat and simplistic for my tastes (although, remembering back, I think I went in with expectations of contempt). But after hearing author Daniel Gottlieb on Fresh Air, I swallowed my elitist pride and put it on my wishlist. Gottlieb has had quadrapolegia for almost 40 years, and despite lifelong anxiety and many medical complications, past and current, his orientation toward his body and his life is gratitude. So.

And . . . the book is simple, though it’s meant to be; it’s written for Gottlieb’s autistic grandson. At times it’s even a little simplistic. But some of the letters are gems—spare and wise, nailed to the earth. I’d have asked him to go deeper in certain places and would have questioned his assertions here and there. But mostly I’m glad for his wisdom and his fortitude. Thanks and wow, Daniel Gottlieb. Wow and thanks.

Hmm.

Given the wisdom and integrity of the second half, why is the first half so bad? Specifically, why does Annette Bening’s character have to be so stereotypically hard-ass? (She’s the rigid, overprotective, driven doctor-mom.) And why can’t Julianne Moore’s character be a mature and articulate adult? (She’s . . . no 50-year-old I’ve ever met.) And why are the jokes predictable and unfunny?

No one ever hires me to clean up her screenplay. Why? Total mystery.

In other news, I read this book. And my review is similar to the above, in that: a) After the dreadful first few chapters, b) the story is surprisingly heartfelt and moving, if never quite spiritually deep. (My mother-in-law*: “Does she get to the point that Victor Frankel discusses, where you look toward making an internal emotional shift in the face of an utter lack of control over your external circumstances?” Me: “Errrr . . . no.”)

I wish Kerman’s editor had helped her revamp her pre-prison story and perhaps shift it to later in the narrative, as a flashback or series of flashbacks. Instead, Kerman powers through her criminal activity without a breath, telescoping to a point of vagueness that feels evasive and rushed. BUT once she gets to prison everything slows down. And we see, of course, that even in a minimum-security prison with a reputation for leniency, life sucks. Abuse, humiliation, ridicule, favoritism, recrimination, etc.

I hate the prison system. I wish it would die and be reborn as a just, compassionate national program of rehabilitation and restitution.

*One of my three mothers-in-law, that is. And as of three weeks ago, they are all totally legal. Fabu!

Welp, the other day, John was doing something, and he said he didn’t want to do it “chetzi-tush.”

M: What?

J: Chetzi-tush. Half-assed.

M: Oh my God. That’s genius.

J: Thank you.

M: Except it should be chetzi-tushi, pronounced chetzi-tooshi.

J: Okay.

M: You really have to get the “oo” in there. Spend some quality time with the “oo.”

J: Chetzi-toooshi.

M: Very good.

J: Thanks!

Later it occurred to me that if we want to do something whole-assed, we should say “meah achuz tushi,” which means “100% tush.”

Right? As in, “There’s no way I’m eating only one cupcake. I approach cupcake-eating with meah achuz tushi.”

I think it works.

Then I FF’ed to minute 7, in which David’s character is having an excruciating and possible-only-in-the-mind-of-Woody-Allen-and-nowhere-in-reality conversation with his wife.

Bloop-bloop! Back to Roku’s Home Menu.

2. Under the Tuscan Sun. I was too ashamed to see this movie in the theater or even on DVD, but Roku, my Roku, light of my life, fire of my loins, okay not really but still, you have changed everything. And I do  love the real estate porn.

However and except. UTS is not so much Real Estate Fantasy as Everything Fantasy, also known as  a heaping pile of horse dung, in which it is possible to mend your broken heart simply by making a bad investment in another country and in which every incident is so highly romanticized that it couldn’t happen to anyone—except, possibly, I realized when making this very assertion to John a couple of days ago, to my dear friend Sarah. (Hi, Sarah!)

Of course, I didn’t stop watching it. Curse you, buttery Tuscan light!

3. Paper Heart. Sweet, cute, and even a little pensive. More than I thought it would be, but still not terribly much. But something. Definitely something.

4. When I read about  BBC America’s series The Choir, I instantly pre-smiled in anticipation of all the tender and triumphant moments we would share. And protagonist Gareth Malone is indeed adorable.

But! He makes painful and arguably unnecessary cuts TWICE during the course of the year, he shames the tenors, and he guilts a kid who makes the seemingly adult decision to leave. No, Gareth, no. UNDO.

Seriously, he lost my trust. If I were a London parent of a public school child, I would not want him at my school, where students already discouraged by their class status (and in some cases poverty) might be further convinced they’re not “winners.” Yuck.

1) Is anyone else enjoying Huge? Great premise: Angry, rebellious, body-accepting teenage feminist refuses to endorse values at the weight-loss camp to which her parents have consigned her for the summer. And she’s played by Nikki Blonsky!

Before the show aired I worried that Blonsky’s character would be co-opted into a pro-dieting message, but not so far. So far the show has managed to present both Will (Blonsky) and the other kids, most of whom are there by choice (or “choice,” considering the cultural context), in an impressively nuanced way.

I’m loving the romantic tensions and sweet moments of vulnerability for kids whose lives are generally sucky. Plus, fat kids portrayed as attractive. Hallelujah!

Show! Don’t abandon me now!

2) In his weecap of Winter’s Bone in The New Yorker, David Denby writes that director Debra Granik “envelops us in mysteries that can never quite be solved.” Actually, all the mysteries in that movie are solvable. Guess Denby didn’t have smartypants John Diller by his side to explain.

3) You know, I’m kind of into memoirs of difficult childhoods, but I had to stop reading Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle about 50 pages in. (More accurately, I flipped to the final 20 pages to find out how she survived.)

Here’s why: a) The book is like a Steve Reich composition with a single, endlessly repeating note but none of the hypnotic and purposeful tonality; b) There’s no reflection to speak of, just the narration of events; and c) There’s no emotional depth in the telling. Why is this book popular? Is this book popular?

4) If you read a collection of essays by a sassy twentysomething humorist who was maybe trying a little too hard and whose tone felt  acidic and possibly slightly rancid with no clear reason why, would you read her second collection? That is the question I am forced to ask myself as I make my way through Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number?

I think what happened is that I mostly forgot what I thought of her first book, and also I am disproportionately interested in humorous essays about twentysomething experiences in New York involving crazy Craigslist roommates. Anyways, I’m not finding her funny or even likable, and now she has a series in development with HBO?

Universe! Don’t abandon me now!

1) Mira Nair made a movie of a Jhumpa Lahiri novel and I didn’t hear about it? That was my first thought when the The Namesake popped up in my Watch Now options. And then I Watched Nowed it. And, well, yeah.

It’s actually very similar to the novel in that there is nothing wrong with the individual scenes; everything is neatly composed and working fine. But as a whole it’s lifeless. Why?

I couldn’t really figure it out about the novel, either. I think possibly it’s that she’s trying to cover too much ground and should have hewed mainly to one or two characters and time periods. But . . . Tolstoy?

But don’t you think the central metaphor just never really registers the way it should? There’s supposed to be all this sturm und drang around Gogol’s name, which is supposed to stand in for the identity struggle, but he never seems very exercised about it to me.

2) Love Story. I know. But it was “free.” Here’s my question. Was this movie pure  redonkulousness when it came out in 1970, or did people take it seriously? And did Ali McGraw become famous after this role, or was she famous before? Because her performance is kind of shockingly tone-deaf. Or, again, 1970? I’m so confused.

One thing I will say: Boston looks really depressing to me. Sorry, Boston friends. I know it has its charms. But it’s so brown. (I know: It’s not like I personally created Northern California. I’ll shut up now.)

3) The Business of Being Born. Holy f’ing ess. If you’re pregnant or know someone who is or might be at some point, I think you want to see this movie. Because my guess is that pretty much everyone assumes that the hospital model of birth makes sense and is based on science and, you know, health care, as in, caring about health. And it isn’t.

I’ll spare you the rant to which I subjected a very patient but tired John last night. Maybe you could just see the movie, and then together we could lament the state of “health” “care” in our country. However, I don’t recommend immediately thereafter reading the latest Atul Gawande piece in The New Yorker about end-of-life care, because it could prompt a total loss of faith in hospitals entirely.

Shyeah.

All right then.

Carry on!

I’ll tell you what:

1) Removal of all caches and secret caches from home.

He did it! He threw himself into it! He drove around Berkeley and Oakland depositing things to their respective recycle-and-reuse-friendly locales!

Massive happy.

2) Purchase and installation of a miraculous black box that streams Netflix videos directly to my television.

This means I have “free” movies (welp, $8.99/month, but I’m already paying that) AT MY PERSONAL BECK AND CALL.

More specifically, this means I watched both Broken Flowers and The Edge of Seventeen last night, just ’cause. I had seen both before, which in both cases I didn’t realize until the opening scenes (I am aging), but I went ahead anyway.

Why? Because with Broken Flowers, I couldn’t remember boo, and with The Edge of Seventeen, I was enjoying one of the only emotionally authentic (not to mention very sweet) movies I’ve seen about teenage gaydom.

Wheeee! Johnny D., you are now and forever making my world a happy, hilarious, cuddly, sproingy, and better-than-Nutella place to live. I am in mad Monday* love with you.

*Monday also to include all other days of the week.

Btw, my actual birthday is 7/26, so the rest of you still have time to purchase gifts/compose odes of praise.

Cyrus! Very creepy! My love for Jonah Hill has been compromised by the skin-crawling creepiness of the character he plays!

And then, as if that weren’t enough creep for one week, I Netflixed Match Point, even though I am in general against everything Woody Allen has done since the late ’80s. And, wouldn’t you know it, more creepity creep!

I don’t understand where Allen gets his ideas about sexuality (the only word is “creepy”), and I also don’t understand how we’re supposed to believe that a basically regular person, albeit it overly serious and calculating, could plan and execute a double murder.

Also, can Scarlett Johansson act? I used to think so, but she’s pretty awkward in this movie. Maybe she does bored and sultry but nothing else. Her attempts at hysteria were not ringing true for me.

In other news (most excellent), a favorite Santa Cruz restaurant of ours just opened in Berkeley. Saturn Cafe! Space-age vegetarian diner! We welcome and love you. We will be seeing you frequently.

And, hey: John noticed that downtown Berkeley now has a Venus, a Saturn, and a Jupiter. Pretty fitting, no? Berkeley = alien-friendly.

1) Winter’s Bone. Gaaaaah! If I had seen the preview, which is super-creepy, I’d never have seen the movie. But I didn’t see the preview! I merely read the first few words of several trusted reviews, all of which said things like “This remarkable independent film” and “This spectacular work of cinema.”

Dutifully, I went.

Yes, it is a remarkable work of film, literary and beautifully crafted. It is also a FREAKING HORROR SHOW.

2) The Visitor. Poor John. In 2008 when this film came out, I mocked him for wanting to see such a formulaic comedy—i.e., straight-laced, soul-dead white guy is brought back to life (Aside: Do you think those last four words justify the use of the single-but-pretentious word “revivified”?) by musical immigrant with brown skin. But the film is far more sensitive than that, and hey! Not a comedy! Good film. Sad. Recommended.

3) Born to Run. I usually steer away from anything even remotely redolent of machismo, but in this case I was interested. I like counter-culture ideas, particularly involving the body, and this book makes an excellent case for barefoot, long-distance running as the natural form of movement for the human body. Along  the way, there are plenty of interesting ideas about evolution, physiology, and the benefits of compassion and joy.

However: Author Christoper McDougall, who writes for Esquire and Men’s Health,  jacks up pretty much every sentence with super-pumped cliffhanger hype. Do men like that? Men, do you like that?

4) Was This Man a Genius? I own this book and had read it maybe a decade ago. But the other day I saw it on the shelf and thought, “Why not? I can’t remember a word of it anyway.” Of course, it came back as I read. And . . . Was Andy Kaufman a genius? Or a madman? Both? I will never know.

In related news, I think I am the only person I know who likes Julie Hecht. Readers? I used to teach stories from her first collection, Do the Windows Open?, and my students were baffled. “What’s the problem with this narrator?” they would ask. “She just needs a hug,” I would answer. Recently I checked online and discovered that Hecht has published a couple more books in the last decade! Entirely without my having noticed!

They’re on my Amazon wishlist. And my birthday is July 26. I predict a happy ending here.

J: If I had a hamster, I’d hamster in the morning . . .

(This was a reference to a hilarious and underappreciated Facebook status I posted a week ago.)

Then, together, we sang:

If I had a hamster, I’d hamster in the morning, I’d hamster in the evening, all over this la-and. I’d hamster out danger! I’d hamster out warning! I’d hamster out love, between, my brothers and my sisters, a-all over this la-a-and . . .

It wasn’t, shall we say, the most melodic of duets.

J: Clearly we have different notes associated with that song.

M: [Hysterical laughter.]

J: What?

M: [Tears of hilarity.]

J: What?

M: That’s not how it works! You don’t associate notes with a song. There are notes in a song, and you try to sing them!

J: [Chuckling.] Huh.

M: Seriously. You’re doin’ it wrong.

J: [Same chuckle, no admission of error.]

M: Your world is so loose and fancy-free. I don’t understand how anything ever comes together.

J: [Thinking.] Volume.

M: Oh, my God.

J: [Adorably self-satisfied smile.]

M: That was genius.

J: Thank you.

[Hugs and kisses. John heads out the door. I turn to the computer.]

[A moment later, he charges back through the door and heads to the bedroom.]

J: My face is too dry!

M: I’m blogging this entire thing. Right now.