Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder’s Reviews > The Tuxedo Society: A Novel > Status Update

Metaverses are the ultimate apocalypse, because they’re what happens when filmmakers run out of ideas.

“I’m going for Audrey Hepburn restraint meets middle-period Candice Bergen all-American chic with a side order of Jennifer Aniston giving someone an award."

My aunt Libby was here, and my heart sang a medley of “The Trolley Song” from Meet Me in St. Louis, the dance hit “What a Feeling” from Flashdance, and Emma Stone’s buoyant entrance number from La La Land.
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“Look at you,” Libby told him. “I’m thinking Colin Farrell’s Black Irish oomph meets Gerard Butler’s B-movie grit, in a hot tub with Henry Cavill if he finally lives up to his potential.”

Libby is, in fact, the person who introduced me to the concept of “taste,” meaning the penchant for judging everything and everyone on earth according to one’s personal statutes.

Aunt Libby is a proven goddess. As a child, I’d lived for the weekends we’d spend together, because my mom had correctly predicted, “You’re two of a kind.” Libby was the only person, or even AI program, who’d accumulated more show business data than me, and could download her archive into my brain.

My aunt Libby hadn’t just confirmed this, she’d been like the very best drug dealer, plying me with Golden Girls reruns and a discussion of Barbra’s role as a high-priced call girl in a movie rightfully called Nuts (Libby and I agreed that her clients would pay extra if Barbra sang).

Everything about Elizabeth was sophisticated without any unnecessary frilliness, like the smartly turned-out heroine of a Barbara Stanwyck movie, where Barbara is always the smartest person in the room, with an echo of the young Maggie Smith or Glenda Jackson as a formidably capable executive or headmistress.

Eddie ratifies a basic show business bylaw: all sexy Englishmen become movie stars, from Ralph Fiennes to Colin Firth to Christian Bale. They get their teeth fixed and it’s done. We’ll deal with Idris Elba and Jonathan Bailey later, because they’re so sexy they count as Americans.

Everyone’s seen The Da Vinci Code so they can compare it to the book and leave disparaging reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. My aunt Libby had me watch it on Amazon when I was ten years old, telling me, “Andrew, this movie’s about the hunt for scrolls which will reveal a feminist slant on the life of Jesus. And it’s got an albino killer, which is always a last resort. What I’m telling you is, it’s a total gentile funfest.”

Her office décor had told the story: she had the investigative instincts of Hercule Poirot (in the first, superior version of Death on the Nile), coupled with the panache of Lara Croft unearthing some mountaintop Assyrian temple pursued by granite statuary come to violent life.