In Praise of Comedy, by Tilia Klebenov Jacobs

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We started this week talking about the things that keep us going through the long gray days of winter: the green of houseplants, some mindful gratitude. Tilia Klebenov Jacobs has also put her finger on something we all need. In her new YA time-travel caper,  STEALING TIME, a present-day teen is tossed back to the 1980s, where she teams up with her 15 year old future dad to stop a thief and save their family's future. Comedy ensues, and action, and, maybe most importantly, optimism.

 

 

 

 

“Can’t tell you how much I needed this.  Fun!”

 

            This, my favorite review for Stealing Time, appeared right after Election Day, and I suspect the reader’s need for comfort reflected the recently-closed political season.  I was flattered to have provided such a tonic, because although our culture frequently values tragedy over comedy, I feel that the latter, being the genre of positive outcomes, is an essential service.

 

            By “comedy,” I do not necessarily mean that which is laughter-inducing.  Instead, I am hewing close to the Classical definition.  The Greeks and Romans used the term “comedy” to mean stage-plays with happy endings.  Aristotle believed that comedy was positive for society, as it brought forth happiness, which he saw as the ideal state.  It was seen as a profoundly valuable artistic expression in ancient society:  Plato quotes Socrates as saying that “the genius of comedy [is] the same with that of tragedy.”  

 

            Today we have drifted far from that conviction.  As novelist Julian Gough points out, “Western culture since the Middle Ages has overvalued the tragic and undervalued the comic.  We think of tragedy as major, and comedy as minor.  Brilliant comedies never win the best film Oscar.  The Booker Prize leans toward the tragic.”  Indeed.  Most bestseller lists confirm this, as does my local cinema’s schedule for the upcoming months:  their offerings for children focused on overcoming obstacles with humor, inventiveness, and courage; those for adults were mostly about serial killers, dystopias, and nuclear annihilation.  

 

            Aristotle defined comedy as “the fortunate rise of a sympathetic character.”  This upward arc, far from being inherently facile or immature, reminds us that order will prevail, that evil is transient, that good will ultimately return.  Tragedy, by contrast, focuses on chaos.  Tragedy happens when order falls apart, and those things we thought were secure (health, love, sanity) crumble.  To quote IamNormanLeonard, tragedy is “when the banana peel leads to a broken hip.  When the man betrays his family.  When the young woman succumbs to a mental illness.”  He adds, “Pity, bitterness, rage, sadness, fear, dread, and, worst of all, hopelessness—these can kill you.”

 

            Broadly speaking, tragedy deals with death, comedy with life.  It is thus the expression of optimism and resilience.  This was underscored to me in a recent episode of the podcast Where EverybodyKnows Your Name featuring an interview between Ted Danson and Lisa Kudrow, two comic actors of the highest caliber.  Both objected to the idea that their genre is inconsequential.  When Kudrow observed, “Entertainment is a service,” Danson replied that he had come to realize the value of his work when strangers told him how his comedy helped them survive tragedy.

 

Somewhere in the middle of [Cheers] or certainly after, people coming up to me and saying, “My father was dying, and he and I would lie on a sofa together and watch Cheers and be able to laugh.  So the old, “We’re not curing cancer”—I disagree.

 

Cheers ended decades ago, but during Covid it must surely again have been Must See TV.  As soon as lockdowns went into effect, those of us who were able leaped to boardgames, streaming series of an unserious nature, jigsaw puzzles, and comfort novels.  We wanted art, dammit, and during the bleakest time most of us could remember, we specifically wanted escapism.  Because we knew without being told that comedy would keep us going until life returned to normal.

 

            Pain kills; laughter revives; and comedy reminds us that the gods are in charge and the world will right itself.  

 

            Let’s hear it for comedy.

 

When there’s no time left, you have to steal it!

New York, 2020. Tori’s world is falling apart. Between the pandemic and her parents’ divorce, what else could go wrong?

Plenty! Like discovering that a jewelry heist forty years ago sent her grandfather to jail and destroyed her family.

New York, 1980. Bobby’s life is pretty great—until a strange girl shows up in his apartment claiming to be a visitor from the future. Specifically, his future, which apparently stinks. Oh, and did she mention she’s his daughter?

Soon Bobby and Tori have joined forces to save the mystical gemstone at the heart of all their troubles. But a gang of thugs wants it too, and they’re not about to let a couple of teenagers get in their way.

 

 

 

 

 

Travel, Then and Now

An American Abroad

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's a very exciting day here at Chateau Hugo-Vidal, because Virginia, aka Youngest, is coming home from the Netherlands on winter break! You may recall she got into her dream grad program in The Hague, and has been there since the beginning of September (after kindly taking care of me for a month post-knee replacement.) She didn't come home for Christmas because she wanted to both travel and bring the Million Dollar Cat back with her, so she spent New Year's in Berlin and Vienna before taking the long flight home (Amsterdam to Boston via Reykjavik.)

 

Having my child at school overseas makes me think of my own experience going to college in London back in '82-'83. Honestly, technology has changed things so much, it feels two different centuries.

Wait - it is two different centuries. Well, you know what I mean. Except for the fact I flew across the Atlantic instead of sailing, I'm pretty sure my time in Europe had more in common with a young woman traveling in 1924 than in 2024. For instance:

 

Paper tickets. I had my return Christmas time flight when left the US in August, and I lived in terror of that physical ticket somehow getting lost. Of course, I bought Virginia's tickets online, and she's using her Icelandair app to access them (along with weather reports, delay notifications, etc. etc.) At least the paper tickets didn't display ads.

 

Traveling across Europe. There were flights, obviously, but in the early eighties they were well out of the reach of students. At least, students whose parents had them on a budget. I traveled everywhere via rail, using my Eurailpass. I have no idea what it cost, but boy, it had to have been a bargain considering how many miles I put on it. Virginia, on the other hand, took advantage of one of the many discount airlines and flew to Austria. My nephew is going to university in Athens, and he's flown on every trip he's taken in the past two years. I love me some trains, but I have to admit I could have skipped sitting up all night while going from Rome to Paris.

 

Speaking of budgets: American Express Traveler's Cheques. Yes, there is a certain romance to the whole "stopping at the American Express office for your mail" thing. But I was convinced I'd lose my wallet (it was always happening in the commercials!) and would suffer the embarrassment of being the Yankee tourist who needed replacements. I wasn't any more organized then than I am now, and thinking back, I'm boggled my parents trusted me with what was essentially a booklet worth $2000. Everything is electronic for Virginia - in fact, she says the Netherlands are close to being cash-free.

 

Cash! The euro was only a vague idea in some idealist's minds when I was going to school. Every new country I went, I had to stop into a cambio to trade Traveler's Cheques for marks, lira, francs, and pounds. Ans then, of course, at the end of my year abroad, I had a weird assortment of different currencies that always seemed to be just under the amount an American bank would accept. 

Of course, possibly the biggest difference is communication. Before my term started in England, I took part in an archaeological dig in Tuscany and then traveled around Italy and southern France for a total of six weeks, during which time I sent exactly zero postcards or letters home. My poor mother! I was better once I had settled into my London lodgings, and wrote a dutiful weekly letter on crinkly onionskin airmail stationery. I called home twice in the fall semester; one for my brother's birthday, and then again when I had to let my parents know I had missed my Christmastime flight from Heathrow to New York. (The conversation went like this - Mom: Hello? Me: Pass the phone to Dad.)

Meanwhile, Virginia texts with me and her siblings almost daily, and we've had loads of video calls using WhatsApp (highly recommended.) I'm so grateful I didn't have to go through what my mom did (plus, I have no doubt Virginia will make her flight home with time to spare.)

 

 

There's one thing was was decidedly better back in the day - when I left and when I returned, my folks were waiting for me right by the gate as I came off the plane. (Those of you under the age of 30 or so will find this astonishing.) In 2025, I'll be circling Terminal E, waiting for my daughter to clear customs. But we'll be just as happy reuniting as my parents and I were.

How about you, dear readers? What are your travel memories from a bygone age? And what's better now?

The Grateful Days of Winter

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: This is the start of the hardest part of winter. Christmas is well and truly past, the excited glow of setting new goals and planning for the upcoming year has dimmed (I see you, already skipping out on the gym) and most of the country is bone-achingly cold, covered in ice and snow, or on fire. The earliest southern gardens won't see new life for at least another month, while in the northern states, we've got three more months to get through before the forsythia blooms.

So whether you're huddled up against the cold and dark or fleeing fiery disaster,  this is an excellent time to cultivate gratitude. Studies have shown it improves your mental and physical well-being, and at the very least, it will keep you from annoying your loved ones with constant whining.

To kick up off, here are a few things I'm grateful for:

 

1970s disaster movies - I honestly can't explain this, except to say I want to watch something that's exciting and action packed, but that doesn't get my heart rate up. I tried watching Carry On, but seeing Justin Bateman be bad was just too distressing. You know what's the opposite of distressing? George Kennedy, who was in every disaster movie of the decade. The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Airport - you know it's all going to be okay with manly men like Chuck Heston and Steve McQueen on the job. (Also, they're always paired with women obviously fifteen years younger - was that a 70s thing I missed?)

 

Yes, there are 2 dogs here. Look closely.

My Shih Tzus who don't need exercise - I love my dogs all year round, of course, but it's when the weather is crappy they really shine. I have friends and family with hearty, active breeds: standard poodles and pit bull mixes and terriers. Rain, snow or impending fire tornado (have we had one of those yet?) those doggos need to move. My boys? Oh, heck, no. They were bred to sit on the emperors lap. It was probably an honor for a courtier to carry their ancestors out to do their business. Rocky and Kingsley run outside, pick their paws up in a way that clearly indicates their disgust with snow, and run back in as soon as mission accomplished. They spend the rest of the day lazing 1) in front of the wood stove or 2) by the space heater.

Not having to go anywhere - See Shih Tzus, above. I know this is the time of year lots of people start pouring over the internet version of travel brochures (an I the only one who misses those?) but not me. I don't want to get on a boat or a plane. I don't even want to go to the Hanneford for groceries, and that's only three miles away. I am in my house like a Hobbit in its hole and I like it.

 

Shea butter moisturizer - As soon as my forced hot air heat kicks in, my skin becomes dryer than Arrakis. In fact, I could use an opposite stillsuit, that wrings every drop of moisture out of the air and, I don't know, circulates it all over my body. Until some smart kid invents that, large tubs of shea butter are my best friends. I slather it on until I slide out of bed every time I roll over. Sadly, I have yet to figure out how to moisturize my back below the neck and above the waist - you know, that part where you yell, "Honey, come get my back for me!"

 

Cat recovering - Have I mentioned my daughter's cat before? When Virginia departed for grad school in The Hague, she left her kitty with me, after a heartfelt speech about how much she loved the animal, and how vital it was to her mental health, and how it would be the pet her small children would remember someday. So naturally, after this foreboding start, the cat escaped from my house and got hit by a car. Now, if it had been my 14 year old Neko (who's smart enough not to run into the road) I would have cradled her gently while the vet eased her into the next world.

But I can't do that with Virginia's two-year-old wonder kitty, can I ? So after approximately $570,000,000,000 (okay, not that much, but it has been enough to buy a mid-range used car) AND spending the past 15 weeks living in a large dog crate on a table next to my desk (have to keep the cat company, or he yowls) I'm happy to say Walker the Bionic Cat is doing much better. His surgeon thinks he'll be able to travel to the Netherlands with Virginia in early February, and if he leaps off her balcony into the canal below, it'll be her look-out, not mine.

 

 

 

 

Now it's your turn, Dear Readers. What are you grateful for in these dark days of winter?

Bonus Shih Tzu and cat jail content