Paul Rudnick

If you see something online which angers you, or which you disagree with, here are some options for your reply:

Was that supposed to be FUNNY? Well it WASN’T!

Maybe before you make fun of something, you should LEARN something about it, ASSHOLE!

Oh, that was so FUNNY! Oh, HAHAHA! I’m being SARCASTIC!

u r so stupid i cant stnd it

I think of myself as a kind and generous person, but this just made me so angry that I hope you DIE!

Ur lucky that Jesus is nice

You made me so mad that I almost went outside

People like you make me so sick that I pray for your pets.

I don’t hate gays or Jews just you.

While as a rule, sensitivity is a virtue, sometimes we can all care a tiny bit too much. Take this simple quiz:

1. Do you ever worry that your fingernails have feelings, and that when you trim them, they wonder what they did wrong?

2. When you hear a baby crying, do you always assume that the baby just found out about fracking?

3. When you see footage on TV or online, of terrible political unrest in other lands, do you:

A) Turn it off, because that way the unrest will end.

B) Think to yourself, instead of rockets, why can’t rocket launchers fire healthy meatless sandwiches?

C) Vow to never invade, for example, someone else’s personal space on an elevator?

4. True or false: when you read your latest poem out loud to your cat, the fact that she fell asleep halfway through means that  she loved the poem, and wants to dream about it.

5. Do you feel that owning heart-shaped objects can prevent inequality?

6. Do you believe that people should be legally allowed to marry their favorite quilts?

7.  When you read an especially meaningful short story, do you immediately assume that you wrote it?

8. True or false: bullies should be forced to sip anti-bullying tea.

I’m convinced that August makes people especially loony. Here are two examples:

In Seattle, according to a local news feed, police arrested an “extremely intoxicated 33-year-old woman” who’d wandered into a yard “with several members of a family looking on in horror.” The drunken woman “hiked up her dress and engaged in an intimate act with several lawn chairs.” The family called 911 and the woman was arrested for Indecent Exposure.

My questions: Several lawn chairs? Was the woman like Goldilocks, seeking just the right, or perhaps the most willing,  lawn chair? Which of the horrified family members was then assigned to hose down the lawn furniture, or was the furniture then discarded? When the family is having an outdoor Sunday brunch, is there a moment when an innocent guest wonders, what am I sitting on?

This was reported online: “An Albuquerque woman tried to poison her two roommates after police caught her having sex with a dog. One of the roommates said that she found 53-year-old Shari Walters lying nude in a backyard shed with her German Shepard, Spike.” A male roommate who’d been dating Walters broke up with her, “because she was having sex with dogs.” While having dinner, Walter’s ex-boyfriend and the other roommate “noticed that their food tasted odd and their water wasn’t clear. ‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ asked Walters”, who later admitted to putting rubbing alcohol in the roommates’ water and toilet bowl cleaner in their food.

My questions: How do you begin a conversation in which you accuse your girlfriend of also dating a German Shepard? Do you start by commenting, “Spike seems really tired tonight” or “Why does your breath smell like Beggin Strips?” After having  interspecies sex, did Shari and Spike share a cigarette, or a rawhide chew toy? When the roommates noticed that their food tasted odd, why didn’t Shari just say, “I’m trying a new recipe” or “Did the Liquid Plumr dressing go bad?”

Here’s Shari’s mugshot:

In the real world, you can see gay couples everywhere, getting married, pushing their kids in double strollers, and taking hundreds of beaming selfies, with their faces smushed together, in Paris, right before they break up. But there haven’t been many gay people in mainstream movies lately, and audiences have been reduced to wondering: is the talking tree in Guardians of the Galaxy gay, and  is he dating a landscape architect? Are any of the tough guys in the latest Expendables sequel gay, or does the entire cast just dress like a Village People tribute band? Happily, there’s a wonderful new indie opening, called Love Is Strange, which stars the sensational Alfred Molina and John Lithgow as a long-time gay duo, confronting the two most essential issues for any New Yorker: love and real estate.

Alfred is a music teacher who loses his job at a parochial school, once the church elders learn that he and John have gotten married. Without two incomes, the couple can no longer afford their spacious Brooklyn apartment, and are forced to separate and live with various friends and relatives. And while religious bigotry is a scandal, being forced to sell  a great one-bedroom is a tragedy, and there were gasps in the audience. I wanted Alfred to confront the evil archdiocese in a public forum, and declare, “We had a foyer!” The movie is very well-observed, especially when most of the characters try to behave compassionately and then start getting on each others’ nerves, especially when bunkbeds and shared bathrooms are involved. The movie is also extremely well cast, and the cocktail parties are filled with glorious actors like Harriet Harris, Cheyenne Jackson, Marisa Tomei and more; unlike in so many movies, all of these folks seemed  smart, as if they’d actually gone to college and held jobs.

The movie never treats Alfred and John like a pair of adorable old codgers, as if they were about to appear as tea-sipping, crochety detectives on a new Lifetime series. They’re believably in love, with each other and the city, and when a minor, rent-controlled miracle occurs, I could hear the citizens of every borough sighing with joy and relief. Because while it’s easy to, say, blow up an asteroid or prevent an alien drone strike from devestating the planet, finding a place in the West Village with a view and maybe even a doorman requires divine intervention.

Of course, there’s another mature gay couple on the loose right now, as played by Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi on the BBC series Vicious. This show has been controversial, because the two knights play a pair of haughty, backbiting queens, sneering and spitting at each other in their London flat. I wasn’t sure about the politically aware response to this show, so I consulted my cousin Andrew, who’s just invented a new app which allows gay men to anonymously comment on each others’ skimpy linen blazers, before they meet for drinks. “I’m conflicted about Vicious,” said Andrew. “Mostly because the writing sounds like old episodes of Three’s Company, only less subtle. But on the other hand, it’s kind of great to watch such amazing actors having a blast, and they must love doing the show, because they always get to make fabulous entrances and then immediately sit down. It’s like watching community theater, if everyone had a royal title. And it’s refreshing to see a gay show where no one’s too worried about creating responsible role models – it’s sort of meta-gay, with satin dressiing gowns and a cute, straight neighbor. And I’m sure that even deaf people can enjoy the show without subtitles, due to the hand gestures.”

So I guess the answer is that the world just needs more movies and shows about all sorts of gay couples, to keep everyone outraged and satisfied. And personally, my new role model is Frances de la Tour, who plays Ian and Derek’s best friend on Vicious. Frances is always being abandoned by her latest lover, in some foreign capitol, and just watching her appraise a new romantic possibility, with a hungry glance, is even better than landing an under-priced condo on a high floor, if you ask me.

There are more and more openly gay athletes, which is a good thing, because it allows the rest of us to fantasize on a whole new level. Now a gay guy can not only imagine  having sex with an Olympic swimmer or gymnast, but marrying him. And of course, not every gay male child hates taking gym. But still, yesterday I watched a group of kids running around a track, and the demographics were clear: the frontrunners tended to be taller and more graceful, while, towards the back, there were the chubbier kids, the stoners-in-training, and the kids, gay or straight, who just didn’t want to be there. For those kids, especially the boys, I’d like to offer some hard-won tips, for nabbing what is eternally referred to as a gym excuse.

1. Break something. In 7th grade, I broke my arm rather dramatically going over the high jump. My arm healed in about three weeks, but I wore a variety of slings, in different prints and solids, for at least six months. My gym teacher felt so guilty about my fracture that he never pressured me to return. Even now, when I’m on a deadline, I sometimes dream of telling my editor, “But my arm still hurts.”

2. Hide. At my high school, at the far end of the track, there was a pile of enormous, foam-filled mats, for cushioning the landings of pole vaulters. At the beginning of each session, our gym class would be commanded to do a few warm-up laps. Clever students could drop out of sight, behind the mountain of mats, and stay there, for the rest of the class, rejoining the athletes for their final  cool-down laps.

3. Claim that your sister is having her period, and you need to support her, as a gesture of feminist equality. At certain more politically sensitive schools, this might work.

4. Forgery. Don’t try to fake a doctor’s note, because you most likely don’t own the correct stationery. But nowadays, why not email the coach a note from your Mom or Dad, concerning your asthma, shin splints or recovery from the flu. Never go too exotic: very few people under 40 have fibromyalgia.

5. Play left field. In my experience, during a game of what I think is called baseball, almost no one ever hits the ball into left field, so you can just stand out there, making a mental list of what you might wear to school the next day. The phrase “coming out of left field” is probably derived from the fact that the people who play left field tend to come out.

Here’s the Bill Gates ice bucket challenge:

And here’s a celebrity compilation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YOSqYGqW6A

The ice bucket challenge, to raise money and awareness to combat ALS, has become somewhat controversial. The campaign has been called a celebrity-driven stunt and  the phrase “raising awareness” can seem vague. On the other hand, up until now, it’s been near-impossible to fund research regarding ALS, and the celebrity videos have brought about millions of dollars in donations.

My friend Jay Holman had ALS, and he died earlier this year. The disease is especially horrific and insidious, because it causes a person’s entire body to shut down, bit by bit, while their mind remains intact. Jay eventually became imprisoned in his own body, unable to move or speak. He was cared for by his extraordinary and loving partner, Bernard. During Jay’s final months, when he could only manage the most minimal forms of communication, Bernard would translate. Jay had a great, dry sense of humor, and even as his disease progressed, he’d manage to express skepticism, amusement and disdain.

I’d met Jay in college. I’d been intimidated by him, because Jay was always very well-dressed, and no one’s well–dressed in college. Jay also hung out with an extremely cultured group of friends, who appreciated film history and spoke French. Jay and I eventually got to know and enjoy each other, and then we both moved to New York, where Jay worked for Saturday Night Live, and produced a  film of the Willa Cather story “Paul’s Case”, starring Eric Roberts. Jay then moved to Los Angeles, where he flourished as an interior designer, and found great happiness with Bernard, who’s also a terrific designer. Because Jay and Bernard were both handsome, elegant men with superb taste, I always figured that they had two choices: they could either hate each other, or fall in love.

I visited Jay over the course of his disease, and witnessed his courage and frustration, as his world narrowed. Even as he had trouble walking, he could still drive, although I’ll admit that I was a little scared , as his passenger. He loved going to movies and theater, and began doing so in a motorized wheelchair. He told me that, at first, he’d researched his disease online, and spent time in the ALS chatrooms, but that the news was always bad: there were no treatments, minimal research, and the people in the chatrooms would disappear, one by one. As he became almost completely paralyzed, his struggle to be understood was agonizing.

Jay was a wonderful man, quirky and funny and loyal, and he’d always let you know exactly what he thought, about everything from global politics to an unfortunate lamp. So even if the ALS ice bucket challenge can verge on silliness and exploitation, it’s still doing valuable work.

– Female writers curl up on couches, draped in shawls, sipping a mug of tea using both hands. They do this while waiting for inspiration, or a handsome, rugged stranger, to arrive.

– Male writers either hunch over their keyboards in manly agony, or stride around their dishevelled apartments, slugging whiskey directly from the bottle. This is because, in order to prove their tormented masculinity, male writers must wrestle with their prose.

– In sophisticated rom-coms, writers will often work in teams. One partner takes the couch, while the other paces. If both partners are men, they will take turns crumpling up pieces of paper and tossing them into a nearby wastepaper basket, for sport. If one of the partners is a woman, she will hold a legal pad and do all the work, while the male partner stares out the window and whines about his love-life, not yet realizing that he’s really in love with his female writing partner. If both writing partners are female, they will discuss their favorite snacks, in minute detail.

– All writers, just before inspiration strikes, will shove their hands through their hair. This is because, especially in movies, writers are often played by attractive actors who have hair.

– Men write in cabins, like lumberjacks. Women write in isolated beachfront cottages, off-season.

– Female writers will usually come equipped with fetching, oversized hornrimmed eyeglasses, which they will remove once a man appears.

– Male writers will often wear saggy sweatshirts with college logos, and a few days’ growth of beard. This boyish, Kerouac-style look only is only appealing on movie stars. In real life, male writers will dress this way, but they’ll smell.

– The bestlooking onscreen writer ever was George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He’s the only writer in history who looked great with his shirt off.

A quick note: new posts will resume on Monday. I’m having the site re-tuned, so that everything will be easier to find, read and forward. Thanks so much for your interest, and your patience.

Paul

So many bestselling Young Adult novels have been set in dreary dystopian worlds, after civilization lies in ruins. So I decided to ask my perfect teenage daughter Jennifer, who devours these books, why young people are so obsessed with doom, and she told me, “Of course you don’t understand! Those books are incredible because they prove that grown-ups destroy everything! I mean, if you and Daddy weren’t only interested in your 401(k)s, wearing those embarassing yoga pants, and eating packaged foods filled with chemical additives, then we wouldn’t have climate change, war and baby seals choking to death on Swiffer products! And in all of those books, it takes a teenager to fix everything, because teenagers still have souls!” When I mentioned that I can’t even coax Jennifer into cleaning her room, let alone saving the world, she replied,  “My bedspread is on the floor because I care about refugees! It’s like, my bedspread is a refugee from my bed! STOP GOING INTO MY ROOM!”

To try and bond with Jennifer, I took her to see The Giver, which is a new dystopian movie based on a YA classic. It’s set in a future society where everyone is polite and rides matching white bicycles, because the government keeps all of the citizens drugged. Everyone lives in similar boxy, modernist houses surrounding some larger, official-looking structures, so the future seems pretty much like a mid-range state college, and because it’s the future, both men and women wear simple knit clothing that looks like ski pajmas; I’m not sure why, but ever since Star Trek, the future is all about stretch pants and tunics. Brenton Thwaites, who looks like a junior Abercrombie model, plays a boy who begins to question the imposed social order, and Jennifer commented, “Oh my God, he’s so cute! You can tell from his hair that he wants to break free!”

In The Giver, Meryl Streep plays an Elder who’s in charge of mind control and keeping everyone in line. She wears a long silver wig with bangs, and she speaks like a cross between Hillary Clinton and a really strict lesbian who runs an artists colony in New Hampshire. My favorite scenes were whenever Meryl popped up as a hologram in various citizens’ living rooms, and she’d always begin her stern surveillance lectures by saying, “I apologize for the intrusion” and then the other person would always reply, “I accept your apology.” I want Meryl’s hologram to start showing up in, say, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie or in my neighborhood yogurt shop, where she could say, “I require additional dried figs in my container.”

Jeff Bridges plays the Giver, who transmits the entire history of the world and all human feelings to the cute young guy, which of course made me wonder, “Where are that boy’s parents?”Jeff uses a strange, grizzled Yankee farmer voice, and he wears vests and long coats, so sometimes he seems to be playing Meryl’s lesbian love interest, as if they’re about to buy a panelled station wagon and found Mt. Holyoke together. Katie Holmes turns up as an especially chilly Mom, who has her son and his girlfriend arrested by the thought police. “Is Katie Holmes playing you?” Jennifer asked. “Katie only has one problem,” I told Jennifer, “which is that she seems to be taking the movie seriously.”

After The Hunger Games and Divergent and The Giver, maybe it’s time for a new set of movies, where the future is wonderful because all of the teenagers begin every day by asking, “Mom, do you need anything from Trader Joe’s? Because I’ll be happy to wait on the really long line, while you stay home and watch another wedding planner show in your robe.” Because that’s a future which would include a bag of soft-baked chocolate chip cookies with pecans, if you ask me.

I was once on a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the topic was romantic comedy. I was seated in-between Nora Ephron and Lauren Bacall. I knew Nora a bit and she was, as always, wonderfully funny and down-to-earth; she had the gift of instantly including everyone in her conversation, and making both the panel and the audience feel welcomed, as if we were all having lunch together. I was warier of Ms. Bacall, because in the theater community, there were legendary tales of her misbehavior. From what I know, much of her reputation was well-earned, and she could be demanding and capricious and cranky. But she had the gift of surprise: that day, she couldn’t have been more delightful. I think she knew that people were expecting a tyrant, which made her ease and humor all the more entrancing. If I remember correctly, she’d had a cold, and we had an extended chat about our mutual devotion to Nyquil. And of course, the entire time, all I kept thinking was, I’m talking to LAUREN BACALL.

There’s something irreplaceable and daunting about stars like Bacall, from Hollywood’s Golden Age. They seem to exist in lustrous, shimmering black-and-white, as the embodiment of glamour. There will always be stars, but  they’ll  be referencing people like Bacall. Stars of later generations are termed the new Bacall, or the next Katherine Hepburn. I had the feeling that Ms. Bacall was well aware of this; she’d started her career as a model and a Vogue cover girl, and she wasn’t at all embarassed by or unsure of her grand-scale allure. Supposedly, in her earliest screen appearances, she’d been nervous and to keep her head from shaking, she’d kept her chin down and her eyes up, and in the process invented a new standard of mocking flirtation.

That day, on the panel, a moment of the cantakerous Bacall surfaced. During the question-and-answer period, some people would stand at the microphone and chatter away, without ever quite asking a question. One film scholar went on for a very long time, untill Bacall commented, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Because my mother placed an extremely high value on cleanliness, I liked to walk into her always-spotless apartment and say, “How can you live like this?”

If your Mom is asking intrusive questions about your love life, just tell her, “I’ve met the most wonderful man, and I know you’re going to adore him. But when he gets here, please don’t mention the swastika on his forehead.”

If your Mom asks, “Why do you hate me?”, because you haven’t called her in 48 hours, reply, “How much time do we have?”

Whenever my Mom asked, “Is that what you’re wearing?” I’d always answer, “Does it need underwear?”

As a rule, if you’re in big trouble, and it’s your fault: Moms like gifts.

If right before you’re about to accompany her to a social event, your Mom turns to you and says, “Don’t embarass me”, respond with, “I was just going to tell you the same thing.”

Tell your Mom that you love her. This will make her very happy and deeply suspicious.

This was a headline I saw online, which made me tremendously excited. But when I read the attached article, while it was interesting and featured many lovely photos, it was still pretty much a tease: the designers in question had been reprimanded for calling themselves Interior Designers, a title which in certain states requires four years of study and a license. These people would, however, have been legally allowed to call themselves Interior Decoraters. But this all got me thinking, about other, and perhaps more dramatic reasons why an interior designer would, or should be arrested, at least according to other designers:

1. Matching bedside table lamps. In 2014? Really? Like at the Holiday Inn, no, I’m sorry the more upscale Holiday Inn Express?

2. A cashmere throw improperly angled across a top-stitched elk-hide ottoman. It’s called the DIAGONAL, people!

3. A boldly patterned, seventies-inspired, foil wallpaper on an accent wall. AGAIN?

4. A row of twelve neatly arranged throw pillows, in coordinated earth-tones, each allotted the infamous decorater’s chop, along a built-in adobe sectional in a Sante Fe home. And on the very first night, the owner HANGED HIMSELF.

5. An amusing take on a mounted animal head, executed in wrought iron or bamboo or beadwork. Even if it cost $125,000, it’s still a CRAFTS PROJECT.

6. A mirrored bathroom. Unless it’s for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, NO ONE NEEDS TO SEE THAT. FROM BEHIND.

7. A kitchen with poured-concrete countertops. Stop kidding yourself, concrete is the GRANITE OF TRIBECA.

8. A flat-screen TV which rises from a custom-made chest at the foot of the bed. You’re not fooling anyone, WE ALL KNOW THERE’S A TV IN THERE.