Paul Rudnick

1. A book/play/album/movie/web series/whatever created by an artist from a tiny country no one’s ever heard of, in a language almost no one speaks,  and the artwork is almost completely unavailable in any format. This assures the listmaker that only he or she truly appreciates this work.

2. A late-career work by a grouchy avant-grade artist; this work must invoke “the terrible power of silence and the triumph of sublime incoherence.”

3. A pop bestselling work, to prove that the listmaker has a savvy connoisseur’s grasp of mass-market art/crap.

4. A fragmented, angry debut work by an earnest young artist with an invented name, a name which distances that artist from his or her rich parents.

5. A work by someone of a race different from that of the listmaker, to show not that the listmaker is a dreary liberal, but that if the listmaker ever met the artist, they’d nod at each other in mutual respect.

6. A just-reissued work by a long-neglected artist, preferably dead.

7. A hybrid, unclassifiable work involving, say, dance, tweets, stencils and 58 boxes of Lucky Charms.

8. Something which the listmaker declares screamingly, savagely, blisteringly funny, which it most likely isn’t.

9. Something created by a famous person whom the listmaker desperately wants to have sex with, or hang out with, or be.

10. The latest installment of a multi-part series which the listmaker first discovered as a child, and considers “a necessary chapter in my own story.”

In 2015 I resolve to:

– Eat more yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

– Read more first paragraphs and then stop.

– Almost finish watching a whole season of something.

– Eat more Costco trail mix.

– In the course of any tragic/disturbing/incoherent situation which grips the nation, hold off on formulating an opinion until having an opinion becomes unnecessary, because the zeitgeist has moved on.

– Do not learn to drive.

– Praise myself for becoming less kneejerk judgemental of other people.

– Attempt to at least give the false appearance of becoming less kneejerk judgemental of other people.

– Decide that being kneejerk judgemental of other people is actually a medically classifiable disorder over which I have no control. So I’m not a bad person, I’m just someone living with Kneejerk Judgement Disorder.

– Eat more chocolate pecan turtles.

My mother’s first name was Selma, so whenever I see ads for the current movie called Selma, I think it’s about her.

In the days following 9/11, there was video footage of Palestinian crowds raucously celebrating the terrorist attacks on the twin towers. This footage was broadcast everywhere, around the clock. In this clip you can see a woman wearing a scarf and large-framed eyeglasses – Tootsie glasses. My mother was convinced that this woman looked exactly like her, and that people would think she’d somehow  joined Al Qaeda. She was right, at least about the resemblance – if that Palestinian woman had been carrying a PBS totebag and wearing Mexican jewelry, they could’ve been sisters.

Here’s a photo of my Mom and me.

My mother died a few years back, and when annoying phone solicitors, raising money for not-the-most-worthy causes, still call and ask to speak to Mrs. Rudnick, I take a secret pleasure in announcing, “Mrs. Rudnick passed away”, because it always makes the solicitors feel guilty and apologize.

A journalist once asked my mother, “So where do you think your son gets his creative spark from?” She replied, “I’m not sure, but he reads a lot of magazines.” I can’t say she was wrong.

“My daughter is NOT having a baby. We stopped THAT in its tracks.”

“So now we’re not allowed to torture people, even terrorists? ‘Cause I got no problem with that, whatyacallit, waterboardering. I mean, if somebody kills 3000 people, what’re we supposed to do? Give ’em CAKE? If you’re a terrorist that’s what you’re gonna get? CAKE?”

“This Christmas I bought myself a watch. I coulda spent the extra money on my kids but I just thought, fuck it.”

I was looking for a Christmas song to post but everything felt a bit tired. So I thought I’d share Thou Swell, the Rodgers and Hart song from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. This number stars June Allyson, who was always cheerful and down-to-earth, as if she’d just wandered onscreen after taking a brisk walk and maybe washing her car (she performs this buoyant number wearing flats.) Late in her career June endorsed Depends, the adult diapers, but this never seemed embarassing because June always sparkled with common sense. We could all use a little June Allyson nowadays.

In an online catalogue I saw a desk which is available in a variety of finishes, including “Distressed Oatmeal.” If I had a band, I would name it Distressed Oatmeal.

I saw a sign on a charming roadside cabin,with a wreath on the door and a full-sized Victorian sleigh out front. The sign read “Last Time To See Santa.” My partner John and I immediately began to discuss: what was wrong with Santa? Was he retiring? Were the MRI results that dire? Or has everyone simply been too naughty for too long, and is Santa finally giving up?

I love it when Jewish singers like Barbra Streisand make Christmas albums. Streisand’s version of I’ll Be Home For Christmas is glorious, but while I listen to it I always think, Barbra, we missed you at Chanukah. Barbra, why are you so excited about misletoe? Barbra, when you sing Ave Maria I can hear Golda Meir weeping and rending her clothing.

I love those enormous inflatable Christmas displays on front lawns, of six-foot-tall working snow globes and groupings of life-size carolers, or as seen here, the jolliest manger imaginable, where the baby Jesus looks like a flotation device.

Here’s a snowglobe which includes two bottles of vodka.

When the electric fans which keep these displays inflated are unplugged, usually late at night, the displays collapse into puddles of weary plastic and then the lawns resemble Civil War battlefields or Samuel Beckett plays.

This has been an especially fraught holiday season, and no one seems in the mood for caroling and egg nog. Here are a few possible solutions for holiday trauma:

– Gather your loved ones and begin singing “Deck The Halls.” When you get to the first Falalalala, say “fuck it” and stop.

– Think about touring the holiday-themed windows on Fifth Avenue and visiting the tree at Rockefeller Center, then ask yourself, “Am I out of my mind?” and stay home instead.

– Consider attending some sort of religious ceremony, but then obsessively follow the news on TV and online instead.

– If your kids keep asking about when Santa’s going to get here, stare at them and ask, “Who are you?”

– Remember that the forecast for Christmas Day, at least on the East Coast, involves unseasonably warm temperatures and rain, which feels appropriate.

– If you’re feeling especially overwhelmed, remind yourself that within a few years, we’ll have luxury resort hotels in Cuba.

While I am of course known as America’s most beloved and irresponsible film critic, as a New Yorker and a cultured human being I very much enjoy going to the live theater, and not only to see Hugh Jackman remove as much clothing as possible, although whenever I see Hugh in a tight t-shirt I want to stand up and shout, “Hey, all of you downtown not-for-profit performance pieces about deconstructing Antigone in a trailer park – you could use a little Hugh!”

Last night I attended Terrence McNally’s wonderful comedy It’s Only A Play, and let me just say this: the minute the curtain rose on an over-the-top Manhattan penthouse with lucite sidechairs and cream-colored carpeting, I was in heaven, and when Nathan Lane entered in a tuxedo I experienced a theatrical orgasm which was only enhanced by my $12 bag of peanut M&Ms. Whenever Nathan shows up onstage, in anything, the audience becomes his giddy slaves, and he has an extended phone conversation which made me forget all about the endless construction in Times Square, anything Dick Cheney has ever said, and whatever North Korea is up to next. In fact, I feel that we should send Nathan to North Korea, because I’m sure that the entire population would immediately follow him instead of Kim Jong-un.

The play takes place over a single night, as a group of theater people wait for the reviews of a new Broadway show. Matthew Broderick plays the adorable playwright, Megan Mullally is the madcap producer, and the blissful Stockard Channing snorts and sulks and bewitches as the resident diva. F. Murray Abraham uproariously plays a vicious critic; sadly, I am most likely the only critic of any sort entirely lacking in such bitterness and envy. I always yearn to tell all other critics: maybe you would be happier people if like me, you understood grooming, poise and why you never really need to see any theatrical work which doesn’t feature a centrally located ottoman.

During It’s Only A Play the characters experience the intoxication of hope and the agony of televised reviews, along with lots of delicious tirades against importing English productions to steal American Tony Awards. There’s also a terrific young actor named Micah Stock, who plays a cater-waiter hired to heap coats on the bed. Just watching Micah do this filled me with joy because it meant that just offstage, there were probably hot hors d’oeuvres and trays of gourmet chocolate-chip cookies. To me, a Manhattan party where Nathan Lane can accidentally eat dog treats is the highest form of art. Nathan’s reaction when he discovers what he’s done is much more worthwhile than say, worrying about the English class system or a rap version of Anna Karenina, if you ask me.

My family was too Jewish to celebrate Christmas but not Jewish enough to always haul out the menorah, light the candles and say the prayers. Some years we’d just pick a December day which was convenient for all family members, and we’d exchange gifts for a customized Rudnick celebration. I always admired my parents for not succumbing to Xmas mania, which I secretly felt would be like sending Hitler a handwritten note reading “All is forgiven. Stop by for highballs and brie.”

I’m fascinated by how some Jews feel the need to compete with the goyim, and to promote Chanukah with all the glitz and fanfare of a holiday TV special. To rival the annual 24-hours-a-day televised Yule log, you can now download an eternal menorah. Here are some other examples of Chanukah excess:

Whenever right-wing Christian websites attack my work, they tend to identify me as “Homosexual playwright Paul Rudnick.” I can’t decide which term these fundamentalists are more suspicious of – “homosexual” or “playwright.”

I love Taylor Swift, for her genuine and appealing talent and because she seems to have been created as a homework assignment by a really bright gay little boy.

I could be wrong, but Santacon strikes me as an overwhelmingly heterosexual event. It’s some Yuletide version of straight people in drag.

In the suburbs, I noticed far more gay guys at Wild by Nature, the knockoff of Whole Foods, than at Stop and Shop. Wild by Nature is the Grindr of supermarkets.

I recently saw a wonderful photo of Kim Kardashian and the legendary Larry Kramer at an awards banquet. These are two people whom I never imagined I’d see in the same frame, and the picture reminded me of that classic shot of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield.

Here’s an acapella group from Oxford doing the Mariah Carey classic. My first play, which was called Poor Little Lambs, was about the Whiffenpoofs, the acapella group at Yale. I always like watching these groups, because in a few more years, most of these guys will become lawyers or doctors or whatever, and I wonder if they’ll find a way to keep singing.

Yesterday Pope Francis assured a little boy that someday, he’d get to rejoin his beloved dog in heaven. Whether you believe in heaven or not, this was both a wonderful, humane gesture on the part of the Pope, and extremely savvy marketing, because here’s Hollywood’s most unbreakable rule: you can kill or maim just about anyone, and still retain the audience’s sympathy, but you must never, ever, in any way, harm a dog. People love their dogs more than they love their children, because dogs love them back in the most uncomplicated, irresistible way. If a character kicks or, God forbid, shoots a dog, that character is toast.

Strangely, the Catholic church has been debating the ultimate fate of animals for centuries. Some Popes have insisted that when animals die, they go nowhere, because animals don’t have souls. Other, less unpleasant Popes have decreed that God loves all of His creatures, and welcomes them into paradise. Which of course, has made me wonder, but what about the bad dogs? Do the pitbulls who bite children end up in heaven, or are they required to linger in puppy limbo for a few millenia? Where do the Jewish dogs go? A dear Southern friend of mine had an uncle, who’d explained that when dogs died, they went to dog heaven, which wasn’t as top-notch as human heaven, but it was still heaven. Jews, this fellow noted, also went to dog heaven.

Carnivores, and the people who run McDonalds, are nervous about the current Pope’s words, fearing that if cows have souls, consumers may begin turning vegetarian. Some people won’t eat anything with eyes: will they eat something with a soul and an afterlife?

Here’s why dogs aren’t merely equal to human beings, but far superior: dogs never have bitter debates over which species are going to heaven.

How could anything this cute not have a soul?