Paul Rudnick

When I first met John, he had two collies, Skye and Suya. I’d never been around collies, but I immediately discovered that they are the sweetest, most helpful, most trusting creatures imaginable. When you walk two collies in Manhattan, you immediately become a parade float. As strangers would glimpse the dogs, each and every one of them would say the same thing: “Lassie!” It never seemed to occur to anyone that this might not be an original thought, and that it was like approaching every caucasian male in Connecticut and saying, “Tad!” One day, as a guy came near, I was shocked and surprised when he saw the dogs and said, “Fluffy!” But maybe he meant me.
Skye and Suya were gorgeous and sometimes they’d graciously pose, as if there might be a photographer nearby. At that time John was living on the pre-gentrified Bowery, so many of the pedestrians were alcoholics and drug addicts living in the local shelters and flophouses. There was one elderly heroin addict who loved seeing the dogs, and they’d wait patiently as this man took a very, very long time to gradually bend down to pet them.
John also had two cats, Shadow and Grace. Shadow was the gleeful alpha-male, who loved attention and would leap across a room to investigate a stranger; he also enjoyed tormenting his sister. Once Shadow was gone, Grace eventually stopped living in terror. To this day, she has only one drawback, at least from my point of view: she pretty much hates me, although at least she’s stopped hissing whenever I come within a few yards. She doesn’t like most people, but she understandably worships John, and will happily spend the day in his lap, gazing up at him. When John leaves on a trip, she blames me, and refuses to glance at me or acknowledge me in any way, until John’s return. I’ve only once had my revenge. John had just left, and Grace mistakenly jumped into my lap, thinking I was John. As I petted her, she realized her terrible mistake, and slunk off, mortified.

The collies pictured above aren’t John’s dogs: the first collie is one of the many Lassies, and I added the collie puppies because I’ve never seen collie puppies.

1. So spotless you sometimes jolt awake in the middle of the night, when a particle of dust settles on the glass-topped coffee table

2. Paper messy – neat, contained piles of crisp white paper, untouched European fashion magazines and that day’s mail

3. Paper messy + professionally fluffed and folded stacks of springtime-fresh laundry, without a hint of wear or stains. Sometimes you just gaze at your laundry, before placing it on the linen closet shelves, where you imagine that the sheets and towels whisper their thanks, for the scented sachets

4. Strewn paper, haphazard but still clean clothing, but with the almost imperceptible sprinkling of breakfast cereal – it’s called gateway sloth

5. Unwashed dishes, stacks of newspapers, stale gym clothes – and it’s not a dorm room

6. Innappropriate food in inexplicable places: a stick of margarine in a shoe, a half-eaten power bar as a bookmark, a rotting apple in the medicine cabinet

7. You can’t tell what’s pet food, what’s dried vomit and what’s a wiglet

8. It looks like a fire swept through your home, and then a flood and there are empty animal cages

9. Is it a comforter or a dead body? And wouldn’t a dead body be preferable?

10. Your home looks like a sweeps-week episode of Hoarders, if your entire family, after eating another family, exploded. But you still tell the people from the Board of Health, “I know where everything is.”

Because it got so cold yesterday, I broke out one of my knitted winter hats, which made me think of my mother, and not just because whenever the temperature dropped below 70 degrees, she would call me to ask, “Do you have a hat? And gloves?”
After my Mom was diagnosed with cancer and began chemotherapy, she’d started losing her hair. This was especially upsetting because my mother, for pretty much her entire life, had never even cut her hair. For my mother and her two beloved sisters, going to a salon was considered vain and a waste of good money. Instead, all three women, as their mother had done before them, had braided their hair and then wound the braid into a neat bun, using many hidden, dagger-length hairpins, the kind which could at times set off the metal detectors at airports. The three Klahr sisters (their maiden name) all looked equally elegant.
As the chemo progressed, I located a wonderful man who cut and styled the hair on many Broadway shows. He generously arrived at my mother’s apartment, to minimize the trauma, and he basically shaved my mother’s head. She’d already visited the small boutique at the hospital, which offered magenta polyester turbans and helmet-like frosted wigs. This wasn’t my mother’s style, so instead I provided her with an array of knitted caps, beanies and baseball caps with the logos of not-for-profit theaters (which was my version of baseball.) She made a careful selection; turning her medical ordeal into a shopping experience was a good idea.
After the chemo ended, my Mom’s hair grew back, thicker and lustrously silver and shockingly curly. The hairstylist returned and sculpted the curls, and I watched as my mother shyly admired her extremely flattering new do, using a hand mirror. My Mom had never had short hair, or anything that could be considered a hairstyle, and she was amazed and delighted. “Why didn’t I do this before?” she wondered aloud, turning her head this way and that. It was like watching a Mormon girl with her first corsage, and it was especially nice to see my Mom smiling, after what she’d been going through.
So yesterday, I wore one of the hats my Mom had favored. She’s gone now but I’m sure that, wherever she might be, at least she knows that, because it’s December, I have a hat.

I know this has been posted everywhere, but I can’t stop watching it. I think this man is a genius,
and not just because his show is called Puddles Pity Party.

There’s no way you’re 5’10”.

When your mother said that you were the prettiest girl on the planet, she was talking about Pluto.

Even Ivy League admissions committees sometimes make mistakes – in your favor.

You’re too old to be using a skateboard, except to move a houseplant to a sunnier location.

Just because you’re physically capable of doing something doesn’t mean that you should do it; this applies to growing sideburns, having children and writing an uproarious account of your dating woes.

Yes, everyone is staring at you. Because they’re appalled.

Sometimes, when a woman is intelligent and ambitious, people will call her a bitch. And sometimes she’s a bitch.

Getting a tattoo of a tiger, a shark or a lion doesn’t mean that you possess a certain ruthless courage. It means that you’ve become a childrens book.

You’re too old to be wearing deliberately distressed and ripped jeans. You look like you took a bad fall, in assisted living.

Sometimes, when a man wears a little porkpie hat and too many bracelets and skinny jeans, people will call him a dick. People will be right.

Watching an Iranian movie doesn’t make you a better person. It just makes you happier that you don’t live in Iran.

Posting a selfie is just a way of trying to counteract what you really look like.

Last night, theater geeks were torn between honoring the passing of Nelson Mandela, and snarking the live broadcast of The Sound of Music. The snark tended to win out and at one point my vision blurred and I thought that posters were praising the heroic legacy of the musical Matilda.
Somehow I think that Mr. Mandela would have understood. He wasn’t just unthinkably brave, but unthinkably patient. He had an astonishing capacity for understanding human nature, and for enduring evil. His life had the contour of an epic fairy tale, encompassing terror, imprisonment and triumph. And he was one of the rare heroes whose life wasn’t cut short.
As for The Sound of Music, it was clunky and sweet. Even as a child, when I first saw the movie version, I remember thinking that, for a Holocaust-themed tale, it’s incredibly goyische. As the story of a singing gentile family escaping the Nazis, it’s sort of Osmonds on the run. When my family would travel through New England every fall, to see the leaves change, my parents would always point out the Von Trapp Family lodge in Vermont, which, after emigrating to America, the clan had opened as a hotel and singing camp. The Von Rudnicks never stayed there, maybe because the Von Trapps, with their blonde braids and uniforms, felt a bit alien, like something from a perkier Triumph of the Will.
But now I’m being snarky, and as I watched the TV show I was overwhelmed by the genius of Richard Rodgers. Current-day musicals are often fragmentary, as if they’re nervous about being musicals, but Rodgers’ songs are forthright and glorious. When someone as talented as Audra McDonald sings Climb Ev’ry Mountain, the song doesn’t feel sugary, but irresistible. And Carrie Underwood’s earnestness became affecting, even when at one point, she returned from her convent in a headband and a pastel blue suit, and I expected her to tell the Von Trapp kids, “Yes, it’s true. I’m a flight attendant on Delta.”

Become a reality star

Become a reality star with a sex tape

Become a reality star with a sex tape where you get peed on

Worry that the sex tape where you get peed on may affect the sales of your signature fragrance

Become a reality star by dropping out of middle school to become an unwed mother who lives at home

Leverage your fame as a teen Mom to make a sex tape focusing on anal sex

Claim that the focus on anal sex is educational, because it can prevent teen pregnancy

Become a serial killer

Become a serial killer with a religious or political manifesto

Become a serial killer with a manifesto, whom even the Prosecuting Attorney has to admit has great hair

Marry a serial killer while he’s serving a life sentence and expect wedding gifts

Do something which requires talent, education and discipline, and benefits others

Win the Nobel prize

Make a sex tape because you’re the only hot Nobel prizewinner

Become an obese drug addict who hits bottom

Go on a reality show to “work on yourself”

Stay clean for three days, announce this on a talk show and expect applause

Make a sex tape because now that you’ve been sober for three days you’re not ashamed of your body

Write an inspirational book about how you relapsed into drug addiction after your sex tape didn’t sell, but while you were in a coma for three weeks you met Jesus and he told you that you were still a good person

Make another sex tape because Jesus told you that no one likes a quitter

Hello, hi, I’m Libby Gelman-Waxner and because Paul has what he considers a life-threatening quasi-viral upper-and-outer respiratory infection, and what most people would call a cold, he has asked me, alright, he has begged me to fill in for him. As I’m sure you know, I am both an extremely successful buyer of Juniors Activewear for a major global retail operation; a loving wife to my husband Josh, who was recently named the Upper East Side’s Eighth Most Respected Orthodontist Who’s Willing to Take Walk-Ins; the mother of two perfect children, Jennifer and Mitchell Sean; and most importantly, I am America’s most beloved all-round meta-media omni-forensic cultural critic. I am currently a columnist at the heavenly Entertainment Weekly, which has just named Sandra Bullock as its Entertainer of the Year, and not just because she looks so dazzling in a form-fitting white gown on the current cover. I could also rock a form-fitting white gown, but I choose not to, because it’s Sandra’s week.
I also need to confirm a report that, as a child, I was asked to participate in The Hunger Games, representing my hometown of Great Neck on Long Island. When I was placed in the arena, I was the only contestant ever allowed to go home early, because I had a note from my pediatrician which read, “Dear Hunger Games, Libby will not be able to slaughter any other children today, because she has a nervous stomach as a result of some questionable Rice Krispie Treats. However, if you’d like to send some children to Libby’s home, she might be able to slaughter them later in the afternoon, after Days of Our Lives.”
I have also been asked to comment, by one of my more urgent inner voices, on the use of flameless holiday candles. These candles are usually plastic cylinders with tiny, battery-operated flickering lights, sometimes accompanied by a little flapping plastic flame, which resembles a press-on nail. These candles can be placed in every window of your home, and set on a timer, to allow burglars to ask themselves, “Is that person at home, perhaps with a loaded revolver, or shall I break in and steal their flameless candles?” I will only say this: I thoroughly approve of flameless candles, especially the latest variety which actually turn different rainbow colors, because these candles make electric menorahs seem more tasteful. As a proud Jew, I have questioned that moment when a rabbi is raised, in a mechanical cherry-picker, to light the flames of that huge 12-foot-high aluminum menorah which stands across from the Plaza Hotel. I’m not positive, but I think I’ve heard the rabbi muttering, “Eat that, Santa!”
As for me, I will remember the brave struggle of that tiny band of Jews so many centuries ago, every time I pass the menorah in my apartment building lobbby, and see that the guy behind the front desk has screwed in another flickering orange bulb. Today that bulb will not only mark another glorious day of Chanukah, but also Tyra Banks’ 40th birthday. Much mazel to Tyra and us all.

On a recent Antiques Roadshow, a guy brought in a still-functional laughtrack machine, which he’d found in someone’s garage. When the host pressed various buttons, there’d be anything from a warm group chortle to an avalanche of hilarity. It was eerie. I immediately imagined buying the machine and using it innappropriately in daily life: “I’m going to pick up my prescription for Zoloft” – “HAHAHAHA!!!” “Aunt Debbie just died of congestive heart failure” – “HAHAHAHAHA!!!!”
A friend once appeared on a very popular sitcom, where one of the show’s regulars, an actress, instructed him to pause after almost every line and hold for audience laughter. He asked, “But what if it’s not funny, and they don’t laugh?” The actress replied, cheerfully, “Oh, it’s never funny. But they’ll put in the laugh.”
I would sometimes stand in the back of the theater watching one of my plays, and I’d make deals with God: “If you let the audience laugh at the next line, you can take my right arm.” I would eventually negotiate for my fingers, toes and shins, until, if the audience was especially appreciative, I’d become a limbless, headless torso. This was not healthy behavior.
As a rule, I hate interactive theater. If I’ve paid good money for my ticket, I don’t want to be expected to sing along, follow actors as they move through various rooms of a building, or stare silently into a performance artist’s heavily funded eyes. If I’m paying, I expect the show to do the work.
I was once told that the best audiences are gay men and black women, because these groups tend to be more appreciative and more vocal. This notion is of course a dreadful stereotype, and it’s usually true. I love audiences who don’t sit there with their arms crossed, planning the terrible things they’ll say about the show later, online. It’s so much nicer when an audience is eager to have a good time.
I used to have a personal rule, about never leaving a show at intermission, no matter how awful it was. And then I attended something so terrible that I felt I was choking, and that I was going to die in that tiny off-off-broadway basement. There were only eight people in the audience, so I knew that if I left, the actors would notice another empty seat. I left. I’m a terrible person, but it was a medical issue.

I would like to salute and thank the Oklahoma City Theatre Company, which is currently producing my play The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. A handful of right-wing fundamentalists have tried to get this production shut down; agitating to put the good people of a theater company out of work strikes me as both un-Christian and un-American.

I can remember exactly where I was when I had the idea for Most Fabulous. I was sitting across from the director Christopher Ashley at the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue, and we were grousing about how fundamentalists liked to oppose anything gay by insisting that “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” I asked Chris, “But what if God had made Adam and Steve?” and we stared at each other and smiled, because we instantly knew that this was an idea for a play. Most Fabulous, over many drafts, became the story of Adam and Steve, the first gay men, and Jane and Mabel, the first lesbians.
The play was first performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where the cast included the glorious Jessica Hecht as Mabel. In one scene, Mabel announces that she’s been personally sent the word of God. When the other characters asked why Mabel was chosen for such a divine opportunity, I looked at Jessica and gave her the line, “Because I have the best hair.”
The play includes a section set on Noah’s Ark, where the wonderful Becky Becker, as Jane, began to flirt with an assortment of animals, including Lisa Kron as Babe, a lustful sow. Lisa is currently enjoying much wildly earned success at the Public Theater, as the bookwriter and lyricist of the superb Fun Home, and as an actress in The Good Person of Szechewan. But if you click on this website’s Plays section and scroll down, you can see what Lisa looks like with an adorable snout; she also got to seduce Mabel by telling her to “Try the other white meat!”
Back then this section also included a pair of rabbits , including the always sublime Peter Bartlett, who sneered at the ark’s racoons, referring to them as “Just moles with eye makeup.” While the rabbits were ultimately eliminated from the script, I will always treasure the image of Peter in drooping ears, madras shorts and a backpack.
When the play opened downtown at the New York Theater Workshop, there were some protestors, and both the theater and I received many identical postcards, from people who had clearly never seen or read the play. The postcards basically said, “God is all-loving and all-forgiving and He wants you to burn in Hell.” I’ve always admired fundamentalists, for their good cheer and venom.
Since then, the play has been performed all over the country, where I think it surprises people. Most Fabulous isn’t an anti-Christian screed, but a comic exploration of faith. With an imperious Pharoah, his boyfriend Brad and a hunky rhinocerous. For various reasons, the Pharoah is nicknamed “The Mouth of the Nile.”

Again, I am deeply grateful to the Oklahoma City Theatre Company, and to all the theaters that have performed The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. And as for those pesky fundamentalists, I agree with Tibby, the goodhearted socialite in Regrets Only, when she says, “You know, I’ve never understood deeply religious people. I mean, I admire them and I think that their faith is so amazing, but they pray and they pray – and they still look like that.”

I have experienced more open bigotry over my food choices than regarding my status as a gay Jew. People have sneered at the fact that I prefer eating dry cereal without milk, and that I adore marshmallow Peeps, which some folks consider a form of packing material. And this morning my partner John and I did one of our very favorite things: we went to IHOP.
We’ve visited IHOPs all across the country, and we’re thrilled that IHOP is finally staking a claim in NYC, with branches in Harlem, on 14th Street and a rumored flagship in Times Square. John and I like the IHOP just above Houston Street, right across from the community recreation center which doubles as the facade of a police station on the TV show Person of Interest. New York remains the fictional crime capitol, thanks to shows like Law & Order SVU and Elementary, with a dead hooker or a mutilated stockbroker behind every dumpster.
My childhood IHOP, in New Jersey, still favored the Swiss chalet look, with a peaked roof, mullioned windows and windowboxes brimming with plastic geraniums. All of today’s IHOPS look soothingly identical: the walls are always the color of a ripe band-aid, the carpeting is always a sooty grey, the artwork is always a few evenly-spaced canvases of apples or flowers, and there are never any tablecloths; the waitperson just tosses you a paper napkin wrapped around a few basic utensils. This should all be depressing, but it’s not; IHOPS are always clean, and they resemble a luxury dining spot in, say, the Ukraine. The menus are thickly laminated, the soundtrack has just switched from Motown to Johnny Mathis Christmas carols, and the staff is always friendly, and able to cheerfully ask things like, “Have you tried our Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N’ Fruity?”
IHOP is also one of the few restaurants where, through the artful use of whipped cream and banana slices, many of the entrees have faces. I bet that at Bouley, the food never smiles at you.
A trip to IHOP is like leaving town; because John and I sat up front, we could still see the street and the river. It was like Ohio with a view of the West Village.
I have never had a bad buttermilk pancake at IHOP, and I prefer the Old Fashioned Syrup – you’ll notice that the name doesn’t even reference any sort of maple flavoring. There’s always a syrup caddy which includes other choices, such as Strawberry and Butter Pecan. This caddy reminds me of a gift set of international aftershaves.
But make no mistake: John and I do not appreciate IHOP ironically. We genuinely love it. And this weekend IHOP introduced an additional holiday menu, with pumpkin-flavored everything and eggnog pancakes. I’m hoping for a limited-time-only syrup called Santa’s Blood.

One of the upsides of someone dying is that it becomes easier to gossip about them.

The initial Broadway run of my play I Hate Hamlet was tumultuous, owing to the epic misbehavior of the production’s supremely alcoholic star, Nicol Williamson. The play also featured Celeste Holm, who was known for both her fine acting and the fact that, at the time, she was one of the few surviving cast members from the original Broadway production of Oklahoma and the classic film All About Eve. Celeste enjoyed discussing these experiences and on occasion, she’d pull her Academy Award, for her performance in Gentleman’s Agreement, out of her shoulderbag.
During the play, Nicol was dressed as Hamlet, in a black velvet tunic and black tights. Because he was a fine gentleman, his hands often wandered to his crotch, and during a lengthy technical rehearsal, they stayed there. I was sitting beside Celeste in the empty theater and she commented, “Nicol is so vulgar.” She paused and added, “You know, I’ve seen it. It’s HUGE.”
On another night, during previews, I added an innocuous line to a scene Celeste wasn’t in. Before the performance, I was summoned to her dressing room. She told me, “If that line remains in the script, I cannot appear in the play tonight or ever again. Paul, you have made me feel like a French whore.” Celeste was 73 at the time. Since I’d already decided to cut the line, her virtue was safe.
I always enjoyed watching Celeste apply her many expert layers of makeup. She’d had some work done, but she was very savvy: she never tried to look younger than she was, but simply lovely, with great success. A friend had directed Celeste in a play in Philadelphia, where Celeste had volunteered to pay for the replacement of the theater’s entire lighting system, so it could become more flattering. Upon her first onstage entrance, Celeste would pause for a very precise few seconds, to allow her many fans to applaud. Celeste was old school, and when another actress misbehaved, Celeste murmured, to no one in particular, “She really shouldn’t do that. She’s not talented enough.”

If you’d like to read more about the I Hate Hamlet experience, you can find an essay I wrote about it in The New Yorker archive; the essay also appears in my collection, I Shudder.