When I don’t have anything else to write, I can always recommend things to watch and read and listen to, because I am never short on opinions.
Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish: I just realized this is closing in Toronto but I still want to mention that it was excellent—perhaps it will get extended or play in other cities. I had seen the film as a kid but didn’t remember it well—it was funny what I remembered and what I didn’t. The performances were so beautiful and heartfelt, the sur-titles were elegantly handled and easy to read, the story is very moving and somehow eternal. The Yiddish made it feel more historically accurate and vivid and thus the sad parts were more devastating. It was also odd to me now living in a neighbourhood where people speak Yiddish regularly, and in some cases have doubled back even further than Tevye’s traditions. I think a lot of what Fiddler discusses is relevant to anyone, in any culture, but there is certainly an especial resonance for Jews, no double. Just a beautiful production of a beautiful play.
The Video for Cruel Summer by Bananarama : I saw this video at a retro dance party (It was Madonna themed, but there were a few other artists in the mix). I did not have cable until 2023, which is utterly pointlessly included in my condo fees, and thus have not seen most music videos of any cultural moment, and this one from 1983 is the BEST. It is just the three girls from the band dancing and singing on a rooftop and pretending to work on cars for some reason. And then they get in a Mack truck for again some reason—it appears the driver invites them in, but the camera angle obscures the interaction a bit—and they sit in the cab with the driver and eat bananas??? And then a police car and a guy in a white cowboy hat chase them???? And they throw bananas out the window at them???????? And then at the end they have a dance party with the cop, who is a good dance. The Bananarama girls are giggling and shoving each other the entire time. It looks exactly like the sort of thing I would have made with my pals in high school, if we had had the power to make music videos. OBSESSED.
Kevin: This is a TV show about a spoiled cat living in an urban apartment with his loving childless owners who then split up, which so unnerves the cat that he runs away and lives in an animal shelter and attempts to start an independent life. Needless to say, it’s a cartoon and the cat is voiced by Jason Schwartzman. As the loving childless owner of a spoiled cat named Evan, I thought I was going to relate to this show more than I did, as it is really mainly about the weird dynamics of the shelter animals, who are, in a word, disgusting. I mean, our cats are also disgusting, but these cartoon animals have psycho-sexual stuff going on along with all the eye-gunk and puking. Anyway, I still liked it better than Mark, who won’t watch it anymore—I wouldn’t mind, because CAT, plus I thought it was kind of funny, but I can’t watch TV alone (unless it’s something I really really really love like New Girl or maybe Heated Rivalry) so who knows what happens after the third episode. If you watch it, let me know! Whoopi Goldberg is in this, and probably the best part despite being, yes, very disgusting.
No Coins Please by Gordon Korman: I loved Gordon Korman as a kid and of the middle grade authors I have re-read as an adult, his work stands up the best. He’s just really fun and warm-hearted and inventive and silly and delightful and perfect. No Coins Please was my favourite in childhood and I kept my original 1980s copy for many years until some child visited my home and like a fool I suggested the child might like this cherished classic novel from 1983. The child DID NOT WANT the book but I pushed it on them and of course never got it back. I tried for a long time to find another copy but the book is never going to be re-issued because a) Korman is still writing new (pretty good!) ones and the shelves are too crowded already and b) it is about children misbehaving wildly on the sort of cross-country lightly supervised road trip that was marginally ok in 1983 but is probably illegal in 2026. Finally I asked Mark to just find me a copy for my 48th birthday and I wouldn’t ask for any other gift and he did it and will not admit what it cost, true gentleman that he is. I read it an afternoon and it’s still GREAT. Charming and full of hijinx and only a few of the strings show. If you can’t find your own copy you can read mine but you have to stay on the premises!
Wings of Fire by Tui T Sutherland: On a middle grades streak, I read the first novel in this wildly popular series for kids ages 7 to 12 and found it…way too disturbing for me??? It’s about young adolescent dragons that talk and have feelings (and occasionally bat around people the way we might swat a fly, feeling a teensy bit bad but mainly not) and they go an adventures and have friendships but there’s also SO much violence and murder and child murder and gore and sadness. Dragons fight to the death in an arena, parents are forced to murder their children, someone gets killed in a grisly fashion on almost the first page, towards the end the RIVERS RUN RED WITH BLOOD from a terrible battle in a war. The child who recommended this book to me is 12 and I asked my 11-year-old niece about it and she was puzzled at my concern. I do not understand but I was very upset and don’t want to read anymore. Whatever happened to hijinx??
Oh, we went back to Costco:
Entering the parking lot:
RR: Well, that traffic island is on fire.
MS: Terrific! Let’s park far away from that.
RR: Ok.
Once inside the store, piloting through the aisles:
RR (pointing at display): Are you going to start buying pants at Costco?
MS (absently, still moving): Do they have shorts?
RR (gestures Vanna White-ishly): Yes, right here, see, shorts!
MS (performs very awkward shopping cart U turn, alienates half of Costco): Let’s see!
RR (unfolds a pair of shorts) See, these look like all your other shorts!
MS: But do they look enough like all my other shorts?
RR: Did you want to try them on?
MS: No.
RR: Great, you have come to the right place, with all your non-trying-things-on brothers.
MS: Fantastic. (Throws two pairs of shorts in the cart, heads for the fish area) I couldn’t be happier about how that went.
Also this:
RR (describes a gentleman of her acquaintance): He’s like 40 or so, very handsome, suave, friendly, in good shape, dresses ok, but every time he leans forward or reaches up—bam, you see like 3 or 4 inches of his underpants.
MS: Oh, cool.
RR: Is it?
MS: A fellow traveller.
RR: I guess. I’m sure he’s not doing it for fashion. But this is way way more than you would ever show.
MS: You find it distracting?
RR: I do.
MS: Because you can’t stop looking at the underpants?
RR: I cannot. It’s not prurient. It’s just…odd.
MS: I understand. But I also understand how these things happen.
RR: I know you do.
