25 Things About My Dad You Probably Don’t Know Even If You Know Him

#1.  He can waltz. He was in several musicals with me at my all-girls high school, and in My Fair Lady we got paired up as waltzing partners for the big scene at the ball.  He’s a really good dancer.  Every day we would come home from rehearsal and practice our routine for my mom. [...]

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“The Golden Compass” – 1. Boycotting “The Golden Compass” – 0.

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman – The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass – are on my To Reread This Summer List, and thinking about them always reminds me of something that really annoys me about conservative Christians. When the movie The Golden Compass came out, a TON of [...]

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The James Bond Theorem

I could never be friends with someone who hated James Bond. I mention this because earlier this afternoon my brother and I had the AWESOME experience of seeing “You Only Live Twice” on the big screen (if you are looking for a good reason to move to Portland, the prevalence of $3 second-run theatres that [...]

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The Liev Schreiber Incident: or, Why I’m Not Allowed Around Famous People

(EDITOR’S NOTE: I went back through this post after I had finished writing it and counted every single time I said something that made me sound like a crazy person.  I have marked them [like so] for your reading pleasure.) I lived in New York for a year after graduation and had an internship at [...]

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Archived E-mails – Actors and Temperance Hymns

I have some extremely witty friends.  So, from time to time – like if I write a really downer post like I just did but then feel bad about leaving you all on that depressing note – I will post some of the many laugh-out-loud funny things people have e-mailed me which I have kept [...]

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The DPC (Dead Parents Club): Or, In Defense of Gallows Humor

Jordan was first. When my close friend Jordan – husband of my best friend Erin – told me his dad had shot himself, the whole world changed for all of us.  My mom was sick at the time, in the second year of her ultimately three-year battle with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as [...]

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Hell Triathlon: or, Why I Want To Know the Random Things That Inexplicably Infuriate You

So for some reason, I absolutely LOVE to know people’s random irritants.  I can’t get enough.  I love knowing the stuff people don’t like.  I’m not talking about reasonable, universal dislikes (spiders, Paris Hilton, interpretive dance) or ideological dislikes (Bill O’Reilly, Michael Moore, whoever is currently president or was president most recently, and whatever they [...]

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Holy Crap, I’m a Godparent.

It has finally happened. The thing I have been anticipating for years, but was pretty sure wouldn’t happen until one or the other of my siblings got married and had children, which, no offense to them, was not exactly like IMMEDIATELY UPON US, so I thought I had a minimum of like five more years [...]

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Sal, Dorothy, Lydia & Glen

TRAITS INHERITED FROM MY GRANDMOTHER LYDIA (DAD’S MOM): Obsession with Watergate. Argumentativeness. Stubbornness. Pride in being smarter than people. “Tough love.” Love of retro kitsch like plaster seahorses in the bathroom or commemorative plates from every state in the U.S. Terrible eating habits. Sass. Fierce protectiveness of family. TRAITS INHERITED FROM MY GRANDFATHER GLEN (DAD’S [...]

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